Definitely not a hater here. I've been a major fan for a long time, but I'm just not feeling this one. I think part of what makes an elf an elf (or other long-lives ancestry) is their longer lifespan and with that a different outlook on time and life. Yes it's not as easy to relate to or understand and that's the point. The reason half-elves aren't as numerous and people might look down on a human and elf pairing is exactly because they are committing to that strange situation with their lifespans and offspring. In regards to the worldbuilding timeline problem, this gives incentive to expanding the timeline into tens of thousands of years. Make the history feel more grand and ancient than Earth's relatively short human history. An ancient empire might be from 25,000 years in the past rather than 2,500. What you can do as a middle ground, and what I have done in homebrew is to more condense the lifespans so they aren't as exaggerated but still have a marked difference. For example baseline D&D elves live ~750 years, which admittedly I find a bit ridiculous. What if they are the longest living race, and they live ~300 years and half-elves could be somewhere around 150-200? With this, there is still major differences between humans and elves but the issues you have are mitigated.
Isn't he saying that can still exist but it'll be more regional, class based, etc rather than biological? Seems consistent that your birth place and culture will be bigger factor than biology within the mechanics of character creation. Potentially there can still be the same stories and history you want somewhere in the world but there is not enough information in video to say for sure. I can't see why it being purely biological will be inherently better though. Unless you want racial allegories or parallels baked into your stories always. Which fair enough if so
Also why humans tend to grow faster and accomplish more faster. they have to. I also like the Half-Elf, as they are closer to the human experience but still can expect to live twice as long which can create some interesting scenarios where their friends have visibly aged but they have not, and feeling weird, while still having a lifespan a human can imagine. I think any of us can imagine living for 200 or 300 years. but not 1000.
I agree with this completely. I do the same thing in my own writing. I think the idea in 5e is that elves live 10x human lifespan. If we shorten that to 3x its more like 240 or 300. Dwarves and gnomes can live a respectable 150 to 200 and teiflings and half elves can live something along the same lines or maybe just 2x the human lifespand bringing them to 160.
@@Doople Yes he is saying that as an alternative. I don't think that's inherently flawed, but it's a setup for basically an entire worldbuilding prompt. Cool enough if you want that, but it becomes inherently central to the world rather than differing lifespans being a biological fact of different species. In terms of racial allegory: I specifically use the words ancestry or species rather than "races" in DnD as part of my unlinking from the real world. I don't base ancestries on certain races or cultures, instead seeing them as literally different biological species, and then each nation-state can have it's own defined culture and is typically not limited to being only one species. For example, elves in my setting live around 300 years and have some other differentiating factors; however the two nations with large elven populations are based on entirely different cultures being inspired by French/Italian early renaissance for one and crusades-era middle eastern for the other.
"I think part of what makes an elf an (TOLKIEN) elf" Elves were the way they are in LOTR because it was good narratively and thematically but Elves rarely work in any other world and people just make up excuses because they want to be an Elf which stands for "the better Human"
Eh, I usually agree on 90% of your takes, but I disagree wholeheartedly on this one. Don't get me wrong: I understand what you mean (and if it works for you, go for it) but the disparity on lifespans can make for some great storytelling if a DM is willing -- and oboy, I'm so willing. Besides, that's the whole point. There's an analogy of humans trying so hard to prove their worth in a world of races who live longer, often shining brighter than any other because they don't have the benefit of time on their side. They appreciate life in a complete different way BECAUSE they cannot waste it if they want to make a difference. So, in short, I respectfully do not agree with your take this time, but I appreciate you sharing it with us. :)
Yeah it really boils down to the quality of the writing in the end. if written poorly, I'd agree with him. but I've seen how well it can be done, so, in general I still disagree
I resolved the issue in my 4e game over a dozen years ago. It has to do with the idea of relativity, where the elves generally live in a realm (Feywild) where time passes at a different rate. So a day to an elf in their magical forest could be a year in the world of men. An elf adventurer would age at the same rate as his or her adventuring companions; and when the party visits the elven homeland, they would all age at that different rate, relative to the mundane world.
I have a similar concept but it isn’t so much that time moves slower there (it runs more variable than that), but that basically it has low rate entropy so change is very slow there to the point that for children to grow up and for adults to learn more they need to go to the normal world - also explains to a degree changelings and why elves would come to the world to adventure (to learn and grow).
Almost all of the things you're mentioned as problems, I see as factors that make the different races more interesting and varied. Outliving your kids, or your spouse can lead to fantastic role playing opportunities and interpersonal drama. A 200 year old character who's had four different careers can be a fun way for a player to flex their setting knowledge or justify bardic lore (so long as they work with their DM and aren't trying to meta-game with it...) The 500 year old elf tired of life is an incredible place to start a character arc of them being reinvigorated by the attitudes or their shorter-lived companions. Having more life-span to risk loosing to a violent death is an interesting cause for a cowardice flaw. These are features to me, not bugs. The craftsmanship stuff holds the most water for me, as that's descended from the Tolkine, Immortal and Perfect race picture of elves. It puts elves on a certain pedestal that does feel... unfair when thinking of other races. But the way you solve that isn't by nerfing elves, it's by making the other races more interesting and unique! (okay, maybe nerf them slightly, maybe elven culture values art over functional crafts, to their leather armor is beautiful to the point of being impracticable. Whereas dwarven armor is all about function over form). All I'm saying is, embrace the racial and cultural differences because they make fiction more realistic and beautiful.
My way of "nerfing" is having the lifespans all the same. Everyone makes Aging Rolls but I have created feats that make the DC lower: Age Gracefully, Age Heroically and Age Trancedantly. SOme races (like Elves) will begin the game with Age Gracefully (I'm thing having Eldarin get the Age Heroically). I've made other changes for training level up and such which fits well this. My next campaign will be more of a sandbox/westmarch and time will be very important. Most characters will never make it to higher class levels due to fact they will die of old age before they get the chance. It will geared for multiple characters per player (looking to run for 1-2 players, maybe 3 per session). Going for an extended family character pool similar to Pendragon.
I don't really see your point, really. You said you like the longetivy in storytellying and such but I don't really see the benefits of all ancestries having the same lifespan in other aspects of the game that isn't backstory. I don't really see how a character would benefit of a shorter or longer lifespan in any way that isn't for backstory purposes. You seem to look at shorter lifespans as something negative, which I don't think that's the case a lot of animals in the real world are very successful surviving and they have short lifespans, and honestly having context on how ancesties in fantasy worlds live their lives because of how long they live is really interesting. And then you said that it is confusing to have long lifespans for players and DMs, which honestly don't agree with that, and right after you just gave everyone to have the posibility on having long livespans, in my eyes seems like the same issue, but you just gave it to all the ancestries, but instead of thinking of each species, now you have several communities, that not all are the same acenstry, having different lifespans. So, i don't know, this whole thing feels like a fix where there wasn't even a problem to beguin with. if anything for me it makes it worse, cause I think there's a problem of sameness if you make everyone have the same options, there will be no reason to pick other ancestires, I mean don't get me wrong having lots of options is good, but having lots of options and no limits on ancestries, would make ancesties not distinguish themselves with others.
Ultimately, I really like the differences of in the lifespans, especially since Lifespan impacts different attitudes. Example races that have faster times to mature, like Goblins and Kobolds live differently as their young can defend themselves soon, why build a Castle when it's easier to just run and hide. While Humans and Elves may establish kingdoms as their Children take longer to mature. If they are all the same, then it then boils down different cultures/practice only to Environmental factors.
@@IAmDollopthis, if you remove age there is still so much room for physiological and cultural differences. Age differences can work in certain settings and can be interesting to explore, but it’s not really needed.
Agreed, changing their ages potential really takes away from why elves are capable of the things they are as a species, living longer means mastery for humans is the beginning of expert or adept
I also feel that the long lived races, like elves and to a lesser extent, dwarves are a tie in to the history of the world. Where would the Fellowship have been without Elrond's first hand Council?
I think elves living for millennia is a bit much, but several centuries is fine so long as the writer takes the effects of such a lifespan into account. A human often accomplishes more in 50 years than an elf or dwarf does in 200. Because the human can't afford to be slow or lazy about it.
@@commonviewer2488 honestly thats how it workd on the forgotten realms. Elves for their first century are pretty happy innocent and sometimes even inmature, after that century, they unlock a memory of when they were in.blissful happyness and perfect harmony with their god. Realizing that they will never have that lifestyle again they often become bitter. And since there cannot be any new elf souls as it keeps recicling the ones that already exists, they eventually gain the knowledge of their past lifes, making them even more experienced but also more inactive, just like how jerks elf leaders are usually portraited
Haha! This solves the core question of why there is no mechanical benefit for your 250 year old elven wizard compared to their 18 year old human wizard counterpart.
Before i watch further, im gonna preemptively disagree. Having a character with a long life span can open the door to story possibilities. Imagine an elf whos melencholic having made some great friends and had to watch as they grew older while he stayed the same. Look up the anime Frieren, it does that concept really well.
@TheDungeonCoach I do get what you mean with long lifespans potentially causing some world building problems, thinking on it now, I think I ran into that problem with my own world where the entire History after the big divine war happened in 1000 years. Meaning if Elves lived for 1000 years on average. There'd be some elves who were alive during the old war. (Which has some implications) I think one way to avoid that but keep the classic long life of elves is to shorten their life span to 200 or 300 years. As for people being granted longer life spans by a 3rd party, I actually have a Kingdom that's co-ruled by dragons and mortal races. Such a society would undoubtedly result in Dragons intermingling with mortal races. So one idea I had so mortal/dragon pairings can last longer, as part of a marriage ceremony, the dragon shares their own blood with the mortal in a ritual that binds them together in love. Either giving the mortal a longer life span or tying their life with the dragon's life.
@@323starlight This is a far more elegant way to express my issues with this idea. It doesn't hit every issue I have with it but it is certainly better articulated. I agree you can with ease shorten the life span of an elf to a mere 2x or 3x of humans and keep them feeling special and long lived. 5e lore has it something along the lines of 10x which is a lot. I love the stuff with dragons, its kind of like Eragon where dragon rideres become imortal when they get their dragon. Again, that's not an advocacy for imortality but I like the idea that a couple has a spell placed on them to share their life span. It could be that this reduces the other members life span a bit but brings up the other making it a great sacrifice. This sparks thoughts of Beren and Luthien, very poetic. Also Frieren is very good, Coach should definitely watch it, gives a very good idea of what it'd be like to be the elf.
@@TheDungeonCoach Other point I forgot to mention in my first reply. I think this is why elves have low birth rates to ensure there aren't that many of them. Also they are reclusive because making friends with people that will die in such a "short" time is very painful.
@@JimyRozeif I recall, in the forgotten Realms setting, Elves have low birthrate because there's a set amount of souls. Elves live, die, spend time in elf heaven, then are reborn into the material plane. They aren't like mortals where more souls are constantly being made.
I ran an alternate history game in D&D. It made it really difficult using the lifespans we were accustomed to from Forgotten Realms (elves living 700 years, for example). King Charles of France (an elf), was a grown adult in the dark ages and still king in 1415.
In the homebrew setting I've been low-key plotting, Elves are literally "humans born in the Feywild", and gnomes are literally "halflings born in the feywild" exc... So your human mom could be 8.9 months pregnant, take a short trip to the feywild, and you're born an elf with 5x the lifespan. I also liked this one line from a Mass Effect game, where an Asari woman was wondering if she wanted to marry a Krogan, and she commented on how, since both Krogan and Asari have such long life spans, it would be a *serious commitment*, not like marrying a human where, even if things aren't great, you wait a few decades and they pass on. While describing goblins in a recent game, I explained they were an 'evil race' (without using those terms) because they had short lifespans and even higher birth rates. They were constantly low on resources, and overpopulated, on top of their craftsmen only having a fraction of the time to perfect their trade... so it's easier/more effective, for them to steal commodities than create them. Lifespan to birth rate can explain a lot of the differences between species. If a human family would have 6 children over 80 years, but an elven family would have 3 over 300 years.... that could explain a lot about how they are how they are... P.S. I liked how a recent "middle-aged elf" character I made lived 200 years, and was just 'working in a shop' that entire time... until he found an Enchanted Sword, became a Hexblade, and *everything* changed Forever! Yes, in 200 years, you could become an AMAZING smith... but not everyone does that... some folk just 'get by'... and the shorter lifespans of humans might push them to 'striving for excellence' in ways that most elves don't bother with.
I'm not with you on this topic. But I'm also not interested in your setting/lore. I'm a massive fan of DC20 and I hope that the races and traits of DC20 translate easily to the lore of Exandria and Faerun. Age shouldn't be an issue, but things like no darkvision for elves could be difficult to explain when using a DnD Modul. Will there be variant races for people who like to play in the forgotten realms?
My favorite "setting-level" balancing idea for elves being insanely practiced at skills and whatnot is that they are extreeeeeemly stagnant. An elf will spend 400 years in semi-isolation becoming borderline supernaturally good at archery. Humans will build on eachother's ideas for 400 years, and when they meet those skilled elf archers on the battlefield, they're bringing field cannons and are starting to experiment with armored vehicles. Another century and by the time the elves have finally started getting societally comfortable with black powder inventions, the humans have split the atom and have started developing applications for it.
I see the different races as alien humanoids. They have unique biology/philosophy that allows for more varied characters. Not to say that inherently every goblin is chaotic, every gnome is playful, or every elf hypercompetent, but that there's an earned reputation and expectations of what they should be like as a collective, with individuals upholding or going against what is conventional among them.
Also they are ASSHOLES! 🤣 Altmer will live for a millennia or more, and they have a whole field of study about how to walk slower so you can live even longer! the decadence of having too much time!
Just don't use elves or other long lived folks if you can't deal with it. Well written elves take into consideration their long lifespan and the unique perspective that brings, Frieren is the most recent exemple that comes to mind. I've already roleplayed as characters with thousands of years, it is perfectly doable and a valid perspective, but requires a little more from the player and from the GM to work.
D&D tried standardizing race life spans with Monsters of the Multiverse, and it just made everything feel more boring. If you really want make sure elves aren't just better, include long-lived as a racial feature with a point value. Possibly add a negative effect to go with a long lifespan, or inversely add a bonus to having a short lifespan. The short candle burns brightest. I love the versatility of the system so far, but this seems to shut down possibilities, not expand them.
I greatly respect your opinion and this is an interesting discussion. Your twists are creative and would be fun to explore. HOWEVER, I don't have a problem with the original lifespan tropes or roleplaying the characters you say you don't want to put your players through. Your proposals are not really superior, just different. If someone is already familiar with Tolkien races, then it actually takes more mental energy to learn your new lore. Your DC20 system definitely will fill a need. Your lore will find a smaller group of adherents but a greater number who are inspired to integrate some of your lore into theirs or make their own variations. I would be happy with that.
For the whole level 1 dwarf - peasants stay at level 1 for their whole life, so like... it's kinda like how a an old village guy can become a level 1 warlock
Isn't that just a human with pointy ears? But yeah I agree, this kind of stuff doesn't translate well to a game option. Tolkien's elves wouldn't work at all as a standard playable race, and a character like Frieren would be really hard to pull off without pissing the rest of the party I've ad that kind of problem before when trying to translate fictional settings to RPGs and you just have to nerf it to the point of unrecognizability in order for it to work
I would argue that it can be done, but it'd need to be like the perfect table. I have been thinking about doing a one on one dnd game and that sort of thing would thrive on having the player be something like Frieren or an Eldar.
In my campaign world, the elves used to live longer, like 1000+ years, but over the last few hundred years they started aging faster and dying off younger and younger (down to like 20% longer than humans by campaign time) due to Reasons, and it's a major point of cultural loss and existential terror for them.
I don't always fully agree with The Dungeon Coach, but up until now I usually understand the perspective and can respect the thought process. This is the first time I think he's had a bad take though (no disrespect, everyone is entitled to a few). The alien nature is what makes them interesting. I hate when I'm in a campaign and races are just a mechanical choice. I'd rather have 3 race options that feel fundamentally different in roleplay over 30 that all act human. Maybe a spicier take... I'd rather be in a campaign that's human only, than one that has human, short squat human, and pointy ear human.
The difference of life span adds to and at times defines the cultural dynamic. Removing it just to put it back kinda makes your point moot. It’s a pot/kettle thing.
Never had an issue with different ages. This hasn’t really changed my mind. Goblins feel more feral so it makes sense they would have a shorter life span compared to something like a human. And elves being old is a big part of who they are. I think trying to explain to a player why elves only live till 80 is way harder than explaining what someone was doing for that time. I saw a great video by Overly Sarcastic Productions about sequels and she basically explained how in stories you have high detail moments (during the story), and low detail moments (before/after the story). You don’t have to explain all the people your blacksmith taught or all the business troubles they’ve been through; because none of that is important to the story. You can just say “My character was a blacksmith for 146 years and then…” and take proficiency in smith’s tools. The only time I had an issue with this was when I was running my first campaign and I would try to make stuff sound old and one of my characters say something about how they’re old enough to remember it but it’s just something you get better at. Edit: Just thought of more I wanted to say. None of this is to say that I like the lifespans of D&D races. I think too many of them have ages that just don’t make sense. I don’t really understand why Dwarves have longer lifespans than humans, feels like they should be about the same. Sometimes this stuff goes too far because developers think it makes the race more interesting to have a different age range when it really isn’t. I’m okay with races being the same as humans most of the time but saying “all ancestries have the same lifespan” is just too limiting and kind of emerson breaking for me. As for the lifespan altering world building stuff you mentioned, none of that is mutually exclusive with elves with long lifespans. What if a human and an elf get married but the elf knows that their spouse will die before them so they’re willing to adventure and sacrifice to extend their spouse’s life. Also, in elf society, elves don’t have long lives, just lives. Even an elf would sacrifice quite a lot for a longer life. Humans’ lifespan has been increasing constantly throughout history but that doesn’t mean that we are just satisfied. We continue to push our lifespan further because no matter how long we as a species live, we still don’t want to die. I know this is getting too intense for a youtube comment and I should probably end it here but I just want to ask that you don’t make all ancestries live the same amount of time in DC20. Rules on lifespan altering based on conditions is fine but please don’t get rid of ancestry lifespans; or at least add them as an optional feature.
While I understand the issue with wondering what your character had been doing for the past century before finally becoming an adventurer, I still think it's better to keep it like that. Not only is there more flavor in saying your spry elf is 70 or your grizzled kobold is 6, but there can also be legit story reasons for the length of time. For example, your character was a priest for decades, but only now got a calling from their deity to do more. Maybe it's because they were always going through the motions before, but turned their faith around. Or maybe another player's character has caught the eye of the deity, so the old priest is called on to travel with this other character. Also, this whole discussion made me think up a concept that I want to try. My long lived race has some kind of cursed item (maybe the bottle for a genie patron). This item is slowly siphoning off their life force, making them likely to reach the end of their lifespan by the end of the campaign. They start off at the equivalent to 20-30 in human years, but gradually appear older as they level up. Either the DM or I could slip in details like a few streaks of gray hair or some wrinkles. It likely wouldn't be till a nice chunk of the way in that the party pauses after one of these moments and says "wait, didn't you have black hair?" / etc. which would fit the idea that they wouldn't notice subtle changes over time, until they pause to take in the full picture and see how much he's actually changed. If they then deal with the cursed item, I loose my patron and maybe an invocation that fits the curse. I can't use the bottle for a while, until becoming a new class to have a new source of magic (probably cleric or druid, depending on how things play out in story). Then I pick a different invocation to not mechanically loose anything , and my bottle becomes a magic item that will have some of the prior patron features, but maybe swap other features for something else to show I no longer have the same connection.
6:30 if you understood the species cultures you are talking about, you’d know why they wait till later in life, it’s not hard to figure out either, if a species life’s longer childhood is a longer period, it’s been in many fantasy stories
I have a character in my campaign that his history started with another characters father and after not seeing each other for 40 years the father passed away and he teams up with the son to continue the fathers quest.
So, i dont see why we can't have both? I agree the things you say are cool, but you don't have to give things up. One of the fantasies of playing an elf is their lifespan. I agree that it shouldn't be 1000 years, but 500 seems more practical, and maybe they have a racial connection to magical places where they must live the remainder if their middle age and elderly lives (an Elven Graveyard, if you will), and because of whatever natural connection they have, they can't leave it, so they're forced to send out their youngest members into the rest of the world. I think that fixes the problem of players picking elderly elves. Don't worry about restrictions on character concepts, thats what races are there for, restrictions! Dwarves could have singular expertises in crafting or such, where they're incredible at one thing, but they're average at everything else. Sure, a 400 year old dwarf player COULD theoretically make the greatest sword ever seen to a human, but it would take 10 years to do it. Why doesn't this craftsman have that kind of weapon on his person then? He made it in backstory. Maybe that's true, but maybe the dwarven gods refuse to let then us the tools that they made. They must give it to someone else. I think there are more interesting ways to play into class fantasies than homogenization
To me the bigger issue is that we don't treat these races with different lifespans as different ENOUGH. Races that live so long would have completely different perspectives on life, on what's important, on what urgency means, and most pertinent to D&D players, they'd have different perspectives on adventuring. They'd have very small families, since the need to procreate for continuation of the species would be a different calculation. The decision to bring an elven child into the world would never be taken lightly, because as Tolkien so well illustrated, they lack "the gift of man" which is to be ALLOWED to freely pass from this world. To take on the life of an adventurer - even for what is comparatively such a small percentage of their potential lifespan - would require a purpose and calling far beyond that of a human, because when you see so much change in the world, the rise and fall of human kingdoms, the constant bloodshed and cruelty, it takes something on a grander scale to stand out as being worth the risk. Every good PC backstory should answer the question of why they became an adventurer instead of living a normal life, but for an elf or other long-lived species this question should be absolutely foundational. And when that IS taken into consideration, the character you're able to embody can have the kind of measured grace we see in Tolkien's work (for instance), with a mix of both placing great importance on the simple pleasures of dancing and beauty, and a deep melancholy when considering their short-lived friends and the hard times they must endure. After all, this particular dark episode represents such a small portion of an elf's untold years, but for their human friends, every day of pain and misfortune is one of but a precious, fleeting collection of days that represent their entire lives. Such is the burden of long life or immortality. So, while I appreciate your take on things, I would miss the opportunity to step into those shoes and live that experience.
Have fun with your worldbuilding, its yours, you can do anything you want, I don't think many people is going to take the DC20 system and use that part of your lore though. Personally I don't mix races in my homebrew, but its ok, its just lore, do whatever you want, just don't tie most of the mechanics to it, or it may be harder to adapt
2:56 yeah, that’s kinda the point, elven craftsmanship has always been described as beyond that of mans You worry to much about Ballance between the species that you missed the five and take between the different species, plus doing this takes away from the collective fantasy most are accustomed to
11:27 😂😂😂 Coach “ that’s so much more interesting to me than”the version without the lore you don’t know 😂😂😂😂 Jesus what has happening to all the 5e creators when trying to do their own thing 😂😂😂😂
I like the ideia, but biologically smaller animals usually live less. I think a solution would be for the life spans be kinda close: small ancestries live 70 years, medium ancestries live 80 years and "large" (like giantborn) live 90 years on average.
Answering the question coached (ha) in this video: It would make all the fantasy races feel much more similar as a descriptive number that rarely comes up in game play is homogenized. One less element to set the various people apart. Differences between people give them different perspectives, cultures and taboos. It makes the elves more like "pointy eared humans" than the alien and incomprehensible elves of Tolkien. We could just as easily jettison all races except humans and play with one ancestry that has different clans, tribes, factions and cultures. Personally, I would prefer to set each ancestry's longevities myself. And allow there to be long-lived and short-lived races. That makes things more interesting, and we take the challenge of worldbuilding to accommodate it in stride. Giants, Dragons, Elves, Dwarves and others have had vast sprawling domains over tens of thousands of years of history. Maybe their advances brought them long lives as their knowledge and mastery increased, perhaps it was their birthright. Commoners remain at level 0 for however long they are commoners, and when they start practicing combat skills, whether magical or martial, is when they can become adventurers.
I think that's kind of a common theme with the DC20 system. Instead of having to play around with ability scores everything is just based on your "prime stat".
Overall Coach can do what works best for his vision of his setting. For my games I’ll probably still have at least certain ancestries be long lived. The other reason ideas are cool too, though!
On the contrary maybe Elven society doesn't evolve much in terms of technology or medicine etc because they live so long. Less new ideas are introduced less ingenuity is needed and of course less need to make a lasting impact on the world you leave behind
I like the direction. Situation or context dependent lifespans instead of entitlements of ancestry is just more fertile grounds for storytelling TTRPGs. Keep up the good work.
You can go the [removed the series in case of spoilers lol] route, who has the most normal versions of fantasy races as possible; but interpreted through a very naturalistic and logical manner - meaning that they are distinct enough to warrant being their own species, no matter how similarly humanoid they look. And as different species, they are fundamentally unable to crossbreed - and in the rare occasion it happens, the offspring comes out a little weirder. Which is why I think DC20's interpretation of these races is so cool! If their lifespans are so similar, it naturally justifies the variety of interracial options given to the player - simply because it'd be much easier for races to raise children of mixed heritage when their partner lives as long as they do. It's a nice and convenient way to coherently mix lore and mechanics into one. Plus, just that idea alone can inspire a more original take on fantasy worldbuilding unique to DC20; giving it its own identity despite how obviously derivative it is. (rip my heart 😅, tis the fate of an edited comment haha)
Dungeon Meshi is a really excellent example of the classic life span setup. Shows the kinds of stories the come from that type of setting too. Hope DC20's can replicate that natural feeling
So I had actually come across this issue when trying to come up with a dynamic and mysterious lich that was about 200 years old. Three of my players wanted to play as elves and one of them even decided to have been born in the same aria as the lich. Do to the similar age and their also similar backstories there was no way I could see for these two not to know each-other. I solved it by giving the now not a lich a youth stealing artifact and increasing his age to more that of like 2000 years. The point was to say that he was stealing the youth of younger elves to live longer. When the player found out that they knew the big bad they had said it helped them feel a small bit of the mortality of elves.
I'm imagining the lich using the artifact to make the elf into an old man or woman, and having to defeat him to stop looking like everyones great great grandparent and get back to normal 🤣
I just made elves a non-playable race. They are enigmatic observers and part-time defenders against the schemes of evil gods. They are nigh on immortal and indeed are the best at everything due to having millennia to train and study. In the current age, the elves have been gone for ~2000 years now, and have left their immaculate structures and crafts to the mortal races. There's various mysteries surrounding why they went missing, and problems to face with the magical items they left behind. Though the name recognition is nice to have when introducing a new player to your setting, there comes a point that your version of an elf is just a pointy-eared human with variable fey connections. Much like my objections to remakes that have almost not connection to the original source material, I think its better to make something new than to twist existing concepts out of wack. Especially with a flexible ancestry system like in DC20, why not make a new fantasy humanoid?
I have many thoughts, so thank you for the thought-provoking video! Firstly, a campaign that runs from levels 1-20 might only take a year in the campaign timeline. How crazy is that? You can reach god-tier in a year. Why aren't all elves level 20 in every class if they live that long? Conversely, age for characters in game doesn't matter that much - they're never going to be adventuring long enough to get proper old. It's only a measure of backstory, really. ANYWAY: What if your "functional" age (i.e. ability to adventure) was related to your class? Wizards must be older, because learning magic takes so long, monks are functional well into their 60s-70s because of their training, clerics just live for ages because their healing powers fight off diseases, etc., sorcerers live fast and die young, and so on.
He is talking about ALL fantacy races in D&D right? So in that minsent dragon's also have the same lifespan as humans... that doesn't work now does it? It is funny though how he ignores the fact that most exotic D&D races age the same way as humans/have the same lifespan. Dragonborn, Yuan-Ti, Lizardfolk, Changeling, Tabaxi.
The 1st reaction is "eeeeew" but there can indeed be interesting ideas being brought forward as a result of that hard take on elves. To start with the negative reaction, for me, it's precisely living centuries upon centuries (up to millennia) that make elves elves. And besting that human blacksmith wouldn't happen outside of rare cases because, as a direct result of that longevity, elves don't possess the drive that humans do. When you have centuries to do anything, you'll never going to rush doing it & most just wouldn't bother. It's the shorter life of human that push them to accomplish so much & why progress happens much faster generation upon generations. That elf who spent 500 years training in the mountains to hone his archery skills? He comes back to human cities where they use gunpowder now. 🤷🏻♂️ HOWEVER, I still think it can be useful to break from tradition because the game needs to stand out in some ways to what already exists. That simplification explaining the cool possibility of mixing heritages easily & having mechanical gameplay effects as a result is good IMO The idea of longevity _overall_ varying between empires, environments can also be interesting to explore. :)
the "i wanna play an old character" Argument is no different if you would want to play an old human. What did they do in the last 50-60 years of there lifes? compared to the 20-ish year old rest of the party? if the old human is a wizard, than he clearly must have failed alot as a wizard, since he spent atleast 40 years doing no progress as learning magic. Thats why don't let players play old characters if your starting before 10th level. Also, different lifespans gives different views on the world. E:g. Elves maybe wouldn't help humans to overthrow a goverment, cuz in an blink of an elven eye the old human rule died of old age and is replaced by a new one. why act know when we can just wait for the next. It also creates interesting dynamics. E.g. nobody knows anymore why the dragons are at war with Human kingdom X. The reason lies 2000 years back where some King killed the Sister of the Dragon and ravaged their lands. Now in the present where the Kingdomborders are much different the Dragon still holds the Grudge on any Kings in a specific area, which is now Kingdom X.
Regarding the discussion of “Elves have hundreds of years more to practice.” Maybe. If a 1,000 year elf behaves like a life-span-limited human, but with a stretched out lifespan, sure. But why do that? How many times does the average human drastically change their profession in the 40 odd years that they are gainfully employed? Why would an elf care the same about materialistic pursuits after the first century of acquiring their fortune (if they are even in to such a thing, which I doubt they are.) Maybe they care about achieving a level of craftsmanship perfection where the aim is beauty, not utility. Or their craft suffers from the law of diminishing returns, so that the extra 50 years devoted to weaving were methods to perfectly thread the blanket but doesn’t improve the product in a practical sense; Instead, the Elvin blanket a work of art; Or the perfection is only discernible by others of the same supreme (but basically needless) level of skill. Instead of gutting the idea of an Elf, design a world around their unique nature, and start playing them as if they aren’t human.
I agree that that it also feels bad for characters to have massive blank spots in their backstory and the way I reconciled that for elves was to imagine they had less drive as a ancestry than humans to commit and get things done in short periods of time, but that also doesn't feel good XD I do have an alternative though that I have used based on a reddit post I saw years ago. The relies on the concept that certain ancestries reproduce in more magical ways. For instance, dwarves carve their own kin out of stone while elves are animals and plants that have lived a long time and gained sentience. Having the lifespan of ancestries be comprised on multiple periods of varying intellect sounds like a fun way for them to be known for their long life span but it not be overpowering narratively. A dwarf could have been vaguely aware of events around themselves when they were still one with the stone and then may return to stone again after a duration closer to the span of human adulthood. I've had a ton of fun brainstorming the consequences of this and other ancestry life cycles so hope others have fun nerding out about this too XD
Coach, while I appreciate the sentiment, that you're trying to make choices meaningful and not pigeonhole a character based on their ancestry, I don't think removing that distinction is the most interesting way to handle it. As a rule, if homogenous aging is established in the setting and everyone at the table is on board, that's fine. But... It really kind of kills what makes different ancestors unique. If I play an elf who's people live 1000 years, that's an important part of my background. It affects my relationship with the goblins and humans in the party. I'm not playing an elf because I get +2 dex (not in my system), I'm playing an elf because that's the fantasy I want to explore. As far as reconciling this difference with Gameplay at the table, I think there are several satisfactory methods. One is, of course, just to hand wave things. I level up just like everyone else, and explain it as I'm learning things I never was exposed to back in the safety of my homeland. At the other end of the spectrum, if you trust the other people at your table, you can actually have meaningful mechanical differences for your ages. In the burning wheel, for example, older characters have backgrounds which have given them more skill points. Else can be extremely powerful because of this. And each race also has a unique mechanic. Elves, for example, have a grief score that accumulates overtime, and they actually retire and fade away if they accumulate too much grief. Ultimately, if the table is happy, then there's no harm. But I want to make my ancestry choice more meaningful, not less.
I always used the racial lifespans as an average for the species. Where an Elf can lived to be a 1000 years old only if they avoid being beheaded, cursed, eaten by a dragon, etc. Because in a sufficiently High magic setting any individual should be capable of becoming an ageless Demi-God. Although if you really wanted Elves to have human-length lifespans, a cool idea would be to play up the time shenanigans of the Feywild. Imagine a human village having to deal with an Elf that shows up every generation, but to the Elf's perspective only days have passed between visits, like in that one Rick and Morty episode.
I kinda see your point, but as elves, dwarfs, gnomes, and so on, are just humans with slightly unique features by now, removing this last great difference raises the question, why not make them a human subrace allready? Of course such long living folks also bring a problem. Super Adventureres. By pure logic, if a human can become a max level fighter in like 10 years, what stops him from spending the next 10 years to also become a max level monk? And a person that can live for 500 years should have the time to become max level in all classes. An other problem for me is the "cross breeding" bitween all this species. Your world would either need that all mixed folkes are infertile, or that there is a great prejudice against mixed couples and their offspring. Otherwise logic dictates that all this different races would mix into one single kind over a few generations.
Imagine having to roleplay someone who has lived hundreds of years, but miraculously hasn't spent any of that time learning a trade, becoming proficient in some kind of craft or musical instrument, can't fight or wield magic any better than a random level 1 commoner doofus, doesn't have any advanced knowledge or wisdom about any topic, doesn't have a large array of allies and useful contacts, and as per the lore typically hangs around a small village in the woods hunting wild game to survive but isn't even particularly skilled in doing that either. It's like in World of Warcraft when someone turns off experience gain so that can play endlessly without ever leveling up. Then one day they meet a few losers in a tavern and WHOA, look who suddenly figured out how to retain information and gain new skills!
From a D&D lore perspective I would disagree, but I have read Worlds Without Number (WWN) and the idea from that book’s lore that everyone is the same race but look different for many varied reasons eventually grew on me. What is presented here is not a deal breaker for me in DC20. 👍
I like this change. Also world building wise, it doesn’t make sense that Elves didn’t rule the world. If they’re the longest living race, you could build up numbers over 100 years and then just decimate all other armies and rule the world.
9:55 you do realize you are describing different reasons a species lives longer than others right? If so You do realize those are some of the reasons in long lived species lore right? If so, you know you are being disingenuous about saying it doesn’t make sense and than telling us the reasons it’s made sense since they were created decades ago, right? Or do you know and you are hoping no one catches on? Or Are you really that unaware of the origins of long lived species in fantasy lore?
For my world, i didn't cut them down to one size, but I drastically shorten their life span so humans are 80 Dwarfs are 120 and Ekves are 150 so their still live a lot longer but not that extrem
4:12 or just make half breeds not be able to reproduce, I mean it’s not that hard my dude 😂😂😂 you just kinda exposing yourself as not knowing fantasy lore like you are claiming It does make sense, just not to you, but it does to the majority of its fans and creators my dude 😂😂😂
1:12 humans having a shorter life has always been why longer lives species are surprised by what humans accomplish, they look at the little amount of time and that’s all they see, elves have longer lives so they plan, study, and practice longer than we do, so humans knowing they have short lives make the most of everyday and get more accomplished in less time, it’s kinda key to the origin of their fantasy and how they interact on a larger time frame, adds a lot to their cultures as well, but then again, your game has it to where if I’m smart enough I can wield a large two handed weapon
7:07 well you forgot to mention most forms of fantasy including d&d and other ttrpgs explain this with the extra bonuses and things they get, where they are specific to things the culture would bestow, humans have choices and can place them bonuses where they want, it represents the humans ability to diversify as well as focus, and on top of that, gives credence to the humans accomplish a lot in so little time because they know they have less of it, and humans tend to pass on the plan to their descendants, which builds upon itself faster than other species that live longer, humans may not be the best at things or be able to live as long, but humans and other species that live shorter spans than elves sure always have those species worried, it’s not a disadvantage to be human, it’s a five and take like all species before power creep from wotc walks in to later additions
I love the Detroit lions shirt. I kind of disagree with the same lifespan thing even though in a game like d&d where all things are becoming equal it sort of makes sense. In a game where you use points to build a character, much preferred imo, it can make far more sense if the different races cost different amounts when the older races cost more because they start more skilled.
4:35 well, I guess you can take away what makes elves who they are, but I don’t think this is a good idea, and if I was interested in your system, this would make me question your design decisions and goals way more than I already do
I've always pictured Goblins and Orcs having lower lifespans due to their diets. They're carnivores, or at least primarily carnivores. Which means their diets are limited, which means their nutrients are limited. And I would understand this as them lacking the proper enzymes in their stomachs to digest food properly from other sources. All of that cholesterol and lack of proper nutrients must really shorten a lifespan. Tolkein did what you said with folks from different regions having different lifespans. For example the Men (that is what Humans are called in M-E) of Neumenor live for hundreds of years. Elves have to live in their homeland or carry a piece of it with them or they lose their immortality. Melkor the dark lord could enhance life spans for hundreds, thousands of years, or even indefinitely. Hobbits lived longer lives because they typically lived stress free lives with all of their needs met, and they ate a lot of vegetables. I'm not sure why the Dwarves lived longer 😂
When I learned a D&D halfling could be just as strong as a human, I assumed it was Star Trek future where humans can live biblical lifespans. In most settings, seems obvious most long lived races would die in accidents or combat hundreds of years before old age. Just say everyone can live to 150, 300 or 600. The maximum isn't the median.
I've always had the problem with the stock lore having human timelines for history and ancient lost secrets that would have been in the living memory of several common races.
Yeah, I can't stand elves/dwarves living so long. It creates a lot of weird problems. So in my campaigns I always have those be exaggerations and they only live twice as long at most, of course with most only living slightly longer than humans.
This is such a wildly unpersuasive video. I think there are valid arguments for having the standard lifespans of races be different, but the idea that it is more interesting when there is no variation is just not one I buy into at all. Look at Mass Effect with Salarians and Asari. The two species have societies shaped by their lifespans and it makes each character you meet among them informed by that context. This is interesting. It is way better than arbitrarily deciding that the average human lifespan is universal because it makes world building somewhat easier for you.
There was many more points that I made than that, but I think it will be easier to have the system itself have this default lifespan, with many other options to increase lifespan, apart from race alone. And if people do want to have races that live longer, they can just do that, very simple addition if that’s the type of world, do you want to play in 👍🏼💜
@@TheDungeonCoach I didn't address that point because it was one of your weaker ones. Those storylines are in no way exclusive to a fantasy world where all the species live the exact same length of time, nor do I think they are much more interesting in that context. I think you're just flattening the differences for really no discernable benefit other than ease of world building. I think that even if you shorten the gap between lifespans having meaningful difference is better in most cases. I think a much more interesting solution to the narrative dissonance of these long lived people being the same level as youngish humans is to attach mechanical differences to those species based on age. This could be something like elves having distinct life stages, where the magic which keeps them alive so long affects them differently at different ages, perhaps making them wild natural nomads/beserkers in early adulthood and natural mages as they grow. Or giving dwarves less skills as they grow older, but more expertise (or the equivalent). This is much more interesting to me than just flattening them to all be the same.
3:41 or you could admit you aren’t a good world builder, it’s not a bad thing, not everyone can handle it, but come on, with how many dozens have come before you and did just that, without holes in their story, no continuity errors, and loads of history tying it all together, like come on, if elves don’t make sense, why are the red wizards so popular and have such good lore? It’s okay, coach, not everyone can be like greenwood, Tolkien, and many many many more
@@bryan__m according to dungeon coach it is, like that’s the whole point of elves to humans, to orcs, to many others. and if anyone ever before him can do it and it not cause writing issues, he’s just lazy and doesn’t understand the genre he’s attempting to design for, my table calls him four stat guy and laughs at his attempts, we are also disgusted at the idea he’s getting bigger at the claim of being the new dnd, like damn, the mystic portal is leagues ahead of the rest of the DND carbon copy cookie cutter games everyone’s praising, and this is the main reason so many games are innovating anything.
A common trope for long-lived fantasy races like elves is that they tend to be much slower to change as a group, and often more insular. Both qualities would provide plenty of reason for an elf to not start adventuring for a century or two; I don’t see your need for exhaustive backstory generation in order for things to make sense. Of course, the opposite would hole for short-lived races. The societal change in a goblin band after the birth of an exceptional individual (e.g. Newton, Hannibal, Da Vinci, or Shaka Zulu) would seem almost instantaneous to nearby humans, who would easily underestimate the result.
But why would the Elf not get any better at the normal things in life, they are not physically considered infants up to 150. It's not just about adventuring, they should be masters (prof bonus 6 and/or Expertise in 5E terms) in at least a quarter of the skills (and/or 2 or 3 Tools) by the time they start adventuring.
Even Hotter Take: I think you're right. I've thought about this myself. The age old story of one character finding love and friendship, but dealing with the depression of outliving them by 100s or 1000s of years is a bit overdone at this point. That, and if Elves were so long lived, it's weird that they don't rule a fantasy world through the shadows and pull all strings in secret.
It's an interesting concept in fantasy literature, but it just raises unnecessary societal questions in a TTRPG that usually don't get answered in DND adventures. Might as well take it out altogether.
I'm going to have to respectfully disagree as well. Elves vs Humans from a racial perspective is no different than Quality vs Quantity. Elves live long lives, have less children, and spend a lot of their time meditating or learning to perfect their tasks. (Mechanically, I'm surprised they don't start with Expertise in a Skill or Tool.) Humans on the other hand have short lives by comparison, have several children, and spend most of their time hopping from craft to craft to leave their mark in the world themselves or through their children. (Mechanically, this explains their solid stat spread or the Feat if they chose a more focused ambition.) An Elf will train themselves by shooting 10,000 arrows until they perfect it, whereas Humans will simply field a regiment of Archers to fire those 10,000 arrows. Long lived races such as Dwarves and Elves are terrified of Humans despite their skills and established kingdoms for a reason. It's because Humans are like ants, constantly breeding, spreading, throwing themselves at tasks until it's "good enough" before moving on to the next task. While making everyone have the same lifespan is an interesting concept, I'm worried it will just feel like the alien races in Star Trek. (A Human with makeup.)
Didn't want to make a second comment, so I'll jist reply here. A series you may enjoy that touches on the long lives of elves and the humans in addition to human society that surround them. Frieren: Beyond Journey's End You can either watch the anime or read the manga, but this series actually touches on this subject.
Don't have as big a disdain for long lived races. The weird limitation can create intresting stories and people in the comments have pointed out a few excellent examples. But i do agree that having a more flexible reason for long lifespans is better for a game. You can still have similar stories as the examples people give but also remove those limitations if you don't want a story that fits into that. Though i do think it will be important to give people areas where they can play out the classic storylines within the setting. Sometimes its more comfortable for people to rely on strong rails for their character stories. In the future i hope we can get details on specific places with strong built-in narratives for players to use. Overall i like that the setting will reflect the mechanics of the game and the variety within the game. Its not so specific that i feel i can't hombrew a setting but it still has the spirit of diversity present. Oh also big fan of a settings that shows the intermingling of cultures and species. For me its interesting to see the mixing of things and off putting when cultures/people feel like they have no impact on each other and are instead somehow stuck in perfectly sectioned off boxes.
I agree with you for 1 simple reason. The traditional approach to elves as you described was inherited by Tolkien. In his world, elves and dwarfs are so closely tied to nature that they are closer to trees and rocks than they are to humans. That’s why they are so hard to convince to join in the fight against darkness, it would be like if you literally tried to ask a rock to help you. Modern DND games look so different from these old war games, but we inherited these weird traditions (that made sense at one point) that get in the way of the kinds of game that people want to have. DC20 is, in my eyes, all about breaking from these traditions in order to run better games. Your elves and dwarfs should absolutely be different from Tolkien. I certainly don’t run elves like they are in Tolkien and I doubt anyone disagreeing with you is running immortal elves in a way that makes any sense. You should, however, replace the old flavor with new flavor. Elves could be ANYTHING! Think of the possibilities when you liberate yourself from the traditional flavor! I’m excited to see how it turns out.
This is a really good point, both on a world-building level and a roleplaying level. Tolkien's races are built for Middle Earth, but don't transpose well into generic fantasy settings. Every world should define its own peoples, rather than a clumsy cut-and-paste. Love the idea of people with different lifespans due to factors other than birth. This might be an unpopular opinion, but I also feel that there should be something alien to the mindset of a non-human character. If you're just selecting this or that mechanical bonus, but the character's behavior is indistinguishable from a human, then why not just make everyone a human?
I disagree tremendously with your last parragraph. It's impossible to portray an alien mindset to a human because we are all humans. Creatures with completely alien mindsets are NPCs or monsters, not playable options. The reason you pick an ancestry other than human is to have a diferent morphology, which can affect your mindset. It's also possible to be because you want a numerical bonus. To be honest, I'm on the camp that tolkenian races should be human options (as well as goblins and gnomes), but that doesn't mean other ancestry options don't have merit, like beastfolk, centaurs, dragons, oozes, robots and things of the sort that have a physiology very diferent from a human but could still have human minds perfectly fine, bonus point if humans don't have bonuses of any kind and the other ancestries have drawbacks built into them.
@@Ditidos I said "something alien," not "completely alien." "Completely alien" should only be the realm of unplayable monsters. Of course any player can only draw on and interpret from their own lived experience, but that doesn't make reckoning with those different from us impossible. I'm just thinking of something that could simply be one or two bullet points in the character's personality/background notes to engage with. And I stand by my opinion that fantasy peoples should be about the world first, and mechanics second.
@@wushubear1 Every character should have one or two bullet points to influence their behavior, sure (well, if the player wants to, but I think it definetly enrich the experience). But that applies to human characters as well. I just disagree that playable options main thing is having a diferent mentality, they should give interesting morphology to play around with or interesting mechanical options (an example of the latter are Pathfinder 2e elfs who are fastest than anyone else) and having strong ties with the setting could be cumbersome, it should have enough space for GMs to ignore the default setting unless it's a TTRPG made for a preexisting setting (like a Star Wars game, an Avatar game and so on). Of course, GMs should absolutely ban any ancestries they don't want for any reason, not fitting their setting included.
So I’m building a setting based on a lot of Greek myths… and I can’t see the gods be okay with anybody living a long time; so bringing down the elven lifespan was something I was considering. But reading these comments it seems like I might want to do something to preserve their culture
This is where you have to separate a local homebrew from a core campaign setting. This is a cool idea, but it is too far from the concepts that you are already using. Longlife is the core of an elf throughout its mythology. It would be an unnecessary shock to the average player. This is true for the other races and their lifespan. This is part of the reflection of the real world that helps people connect to the fantasy. For example, if my dog had the intelligence of a human, she would still have a much shorter lifespan.
I disagree with the notion that the old age thing is problematic. Your example was a 150 year old dwarf setting out as a low lvl adveturer not making sense but would it make any more sense for an 85 year old woman to step out the door one day where shes lived, had grandkids and the like just to spontaneously pick up a stick and go start punching dragons? No hate though, always a fan and cant wait to get your books ❤️
Well thought out with good thinking points. I'll add another example I've seen work well in books, specifically the He Who Fights With Monsters series, where for someone to live longer, they have to be more magically powerful. In that series, and a few others I've read, lifespan is tied to how much you've "leveled up" or something similar, and I think that works well too.
Something i loved about the LotR books vs movies was the lore that gets exposed about the elves of Lothlorien. When the fellowship stops in the forest visiting the elves there, they left and most of them thought it had only felt like a couple of days when in truth they had been there for around a month. They explained (roughly) that the elves magically experience time in a different way to the point that it affects the lands around them.
I've had an idea that in my world, pretty much every race is just a magically evolved version of humans, for example, elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, but this doesn't just apply to humans, monsters, dragons, and other such creatures are born through magic evolution. Anyways, with that in mind, elves and dwarves do live longer than humans but not that much longer, maybe as long as half elves, if not maybe a bit longer. Elves used to be immortal, but due to some in lore stuff that would be way too long for a TH-cam comment, they're not anymore.
There is a line in Dimension 20 where a character admits they weren't always a firefighter. Before they became a firefighter, they were in high school, and they became a firefighter after graduating. This was a funny scene, because nobody needed to know that. So I disagree HARD about having to come up with 150 years of backstory. We only care about the relevant bits, which might just be the last 5 years. Its a backstory, not a resume.
Nah gonna have to disagree on this one. The change wont stop me from supporting by any means. Different life spans are natural between species. No reason there cant be magical means of extending life as well
i actually kind of like the “people live longer because they have access to certain magic” idea - it fits really well with a lot of folklore and mythology. even gods were sometimes only gods because they ate fruit from a tree that granted immortality. also, immortal being something you gain also implies that it might be something you can *lose*, and that’s a compelling concept all on its own! although, i don’t think some species naturally living longer would immediately mean that they become the rulers of every society. lore keepers and experts, certainly. but nothing kills a civilization worse than being unable to adapt to change, and i can’t imagine things much less adaptable than a bunch of elven nobles who have *personally* been running the kingdom the same way for 500 years. they might provide a lot of stability, but you can always have too much of a good thing.
I respectfully disagree with you here. But i think you are not familiar with the elven or dwarven lore and therefore dont understand why it makes sense. Elfs reach maturity at the age of 100 years. During this growin up Phase they are more focused on enjoying the beaty of the world, they would stare at a flower for hours, enjoy their Reverie(Elven Trance that shows them life in heaven). They know they have lots of time to live and thats why they are not in a hurry to grow up, learn a skill, join a wizard acadamy, join a martial training etc. You dont need to fill in these 100 years because they are still a child and usually nothing important happens in there life during that time. Same thing with dwarves they reach maturity at the age of 50, but they spent year and decades on improving their craft, learning their clan and family traditions, learn to mine, learn to smith, learn to sharpen etc. Their life is also not very adventurery like before that age thats why it makes sense for them to become and adventurer way later on in live because they are not mature yet. I think most D&D player arent actually aware of the lore behind these races and would profit from the rich lore when roleplaying them. I suggest you watch the veideo of MrRhexx on Elves and Dwarves he explains them in depth.
I must say, this lifespan thing is really something that bugged me a lot on ttrpgs. There were even some "starting age" for your characters on some older d&d iterations. And I must say that the ribbon feature of the timeless body of the druid inspired me to create a character, specifically a druid elf of some thousand years that I used as a npc in one of my campaigns.
In the "5E" campaign I'm setting up, I will have all player races age the same as humans. I am also implementing Aging Rolls, which starts at character creation (this is also how a PC will determine starting ability scores). Plus, all training (level ups, feats, upgrades to Ancestral Weapons, new skills, etc.) require downtime with a specific amount of tendays and gp per tenday. Instead of leveling up normally, you can either spend actual time and gold or spend XP (based on current level for everything except level up, which will be based on next level to attain) to reduce the time it takes for Training downtime activity.
It would be interesting if Elves aged in the same way Saiyans do in Dragon Ball. The die around the same time as humans, but they are in their prime for far longer than other species. That means that once they DO start aging, they age far faster than others. So an 80 year old Human and an 80 year old Saiyan appear to have aged the same amount, but that process only started kicking in for the saiyan a few years ago. I think that makes a lot of sense to use for other fictional ancestries.
I'm a 100% hard disagree on this, and it's one of my favorite things about elves. I think it should have a massive impact on culture. That said, i like your rules so I can use those while ignoring your lore.
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Definitely not a hater here. I've been a major fan for a long time, but I'm just not feeling this one. I think part of what makes an elf an elf (or other long-lives ancestry) is their longer lifespan and with that a different outlook on time and life. Yes it's not as easy to relate to or understand and that's the point. The reason half-elves aren't as numerous and people might look down on a human and elf pairing is exactly because they are committing to that strange situation with their lifespans and offspring.
In regards to the worldbuilding timeline problem, this gives incentive to expanding the timeline into tens of thousands of years. Make the history feel more grand and ancient than Earth's relatively short human history. An ancient empire might be from 25,000 years in the past rather than 2,500.
What you can do as a middle ground, and what I have done in homebrew is to more condense the lifespans so they aren't as exaggerated but still have a marked difference. For example baseline D&D elves live ~750 years, which admittedly I find a bit ridiculous. What if they are the longest living race, and they live ~300 years and half-elves could be somewhere around 150-200? With this, there is still major differences between humans and elves but the issues you have are mitigated.
Isn't he saying that can still exist but it'll be more regional, class based, etc rather than biological? Seems consistent that your birth place and culture will be bigger factor than biology within the mechanics of character creation. Potentially there can still be the same stories and history you want somewhere in the world but there is not enough information in video to say for sure.
I can't see why it being purely biological will be inherently better though. Unless you want racial allegories or parallels baked into your stories always. Which fair enough if so
Also why humans tend to grow faster and accomplish more faster. they have to. I also like the Half-Elf, as they are closer to the human experience but still can expect to live twice as long which can create some interesting scenarios where their friends have visibly aged but they have not, and feeling weird, while still having a lifespan a human can imagine.
I think any of us can imagine living for 200 or 300 years. but not 1000.
I agree with this completely. I do the same thing in my own writing. I think the idea in 5e is that elves live 10x human lifespan. If we shorten that to 3x its more like 240 or 300. Dwarves and gnomes can live a respectable 150 to 200 and teiflings and half elves can live something along the same lines or maybe just 2x the human lifespand bringing them to 160.
@@Doople Yes he is saying that as an alternative. I don't think that's inherently flawed, but it's a setup for basically an entire worldbuilding prompt.
Cool enough if you want that, but it becomes inherently central to the world rather than differing lifespans being a biological fact of different species.
In terms of racial allegory: I specifically use the words ancestry or species rather than "races" in DnD as part of my unlinking from the real world. I don't base ancestries on certain races or cultures, instead seeing them as literally different biological species, and then each nation-state can have it's own defined culture and is typically not limited to being only one species.
For example, elves in my setting live around 300 years and have some other differentiating factors; however the two nations with large elven populations are based on entirely different cultures being inspired by French/Italian early renaissance for one and crusades-era middle eastern for the other.
"I think part of what makes an elf an (TOLKIEN) elf"
Elves were the way they are in LOTR because it was good narratively and thematically but Elves rarely work in any other world and people just make up excuses because they want to be an Elf which stands for "the better Human"
Eh, I usually agree on 90% of your takes, but I disagree wholeheartedly on this one. Don't get me wrong: I understand what you mean (and if it works for you, go for it) but the disparity on lifespans can make for some great storytelling if a DM is willing -- and oboy, I'm so willing.
Besides, that's the whole point. There's an analogy of humans trying so hard to prove their worth in a world of races who live longer, often shining brighter than any other because they don't have the benefit of time on their side. They appreciate life in a complete different way BECAUSE they cannot waste it if they want to make a difference.
So, in short, I respectfully do not agree with your take this time, but I appreciate you sharing it with us. :)
Yeah it really boils down to the quality of the writing in the end. if written poorly, I'd agree with him. but I've seen how well it can be done, so, in general I still disagree
I resolved the issue in my 4e game over a dozen years ago. It has to do with the idea of relativity, where the elves generally live in a realm (Feywild) where time passes at a different rate. So a day to an elf in their magical forest could be a year in the world of men. An elf adventurer would age at the same rate as his or her adventuring companions; and when the party visits the elven homeland, they would all age at that different rate, relative to the mundane world.
I have a similar concept but it isn’t so much that time moves slower there (it runs more variable than that), but that basically it has low rate entropy so change is very slow there to the point that for children to grow up and for adults to learn more they need to go to the normal world - also explains to a degree changelings and why elves would come to the world to adventure (to learn and grow).
Almost all of the things you're mentioned as problems, I see as factors that make the different races more interesting and varied. Outliving your kids, or your spouse can lead to fantastic role playing opportunities and interpersonal drama. A 200 year old character who's had four different careers can be a fun way for a player to flex their setting knowledge or justify bardic lore (so long as they work with their DM and aren't trying to meta-game with it...) The 500 year old elf tired of life is an incredible place to start a character arc of them being reinvigorated by the attitudes or their shorter-lived companions. Having more life-span to risk loosing to a violent death is an interesting cause for a cowardice flaw. These are features to me, not bugs.
The craftsmanship stuff holds the most water for me, as that's descended from the Tolkine, Immortal and Perfect race picture of elves. It puts elves on a certain pedestal that does feel... unfair when thinking of other races. But the way you solve that isn't by nerfing elves, it's by making the other races more interesting and unique! (okay, maybe nerf them slightly, maybe elven culture values art over functional crafts, to their leather armor is beautiful to the point of being impracticable. Whereas dwarven armor is all about function over form).
All I'm saying is, embrace the racial and cultural differences because they make fiction more realistic and beautiful.
My way of "nerfing" is having the lifespans all the same. Everyone makes Aging Rolls but I have created feats that make the DC lower: Age Gracefully, Age Heroically and Age Trancedantly. SOme races (like Elves) will begin the game with Age Gracefully (I'm thing having Eldarin get the Age Heroically).
I've made other changes for training level up and such which fits well this. My next campaign will be more of a sandbox/westmarch and time will be very important. Most characters will never make it to higher class levels due to fact they will die of old age before they get the chance.
It will geared for multiple characters per player (looking to run for 1-2 players, maybe 3 per session). Going for an extended family character pool similar to Pendragon.
I don't really see your point, really. You said you like the longetivy in storytellying and such but I don't really see the benefits of all ancestries having the same lifespan in other aspects of the game that isn't backstory. I don't really see how a character would benefit of a shorter or longer lifespan in any way that isn't for backstory purposes.
You seem to look at shorter lifespans as something negative, which I don't think that's the case a lot of animals in the real world are very successful surviving and they have short lifespans, and honestly having context on how ancesties in fantasy worlds live their lives because of how long they live is really interesting.
And then you said that it is confusing to have long lifespans for players and DMs, which honestly don't agree with that, and right after you just gave everyone to have the posibility on having long livespans, in my eyes seems like the same issue, but you just gave it to all the ancestries, but instead of thinking of each species, now you have several communities, that not all are the same acenstry, having different lifespans.
So, i don't know, this whole thing feels like a fix where there wasn't even a problem to beguin with. if anything for me it makes it worse, cause I think there's a problem of sameness if you make everyone have the same options, there will be no reason to pick other ancestires, I mean don't get me wrong having lots of options is good, but having lots of options and no limits on ancestries, would make ancesties not distinguish themselves with others.
Ultimately, I really like the differences of in the lifespans, especially since Lifespan impacts different attitudes. Example races that have faster times to mature, like Goblins and Kobolds live differently as their young can defend themselves soon, why build a Castle when it's easier to just run and hide. While Humans and Elves may establish kingdoms as their Children take longer to mature. If they are all the same, then it then boils down different cultures/practice only to Environmental factors.
Everyone knows elves don't DIE. They just go to a farm upstate where there's all sorts of fun things to do and other elves to hang out with.
I thought you were going to go in a different direct, "Elves don't die, we multiply!"
I respectfully disagree. There is already too much homogenization of fantasy races.
Seriously. This feels like an argument for cosmetically-different flavors of humans.
Not really. There are a lot of physical differences, lore differences, ability differences. Is lifespan really that bad of a thing to alter?
@@IAmDollopthis, if you remove age there is still so much room for physiological and cultural differences.
Age differences can work in certain settings and can be interesting to explore, but it’s not really needed.
Agreed, changing their ages potential really takes away from why elves are capable of the things they are as a species, living longer means mastery for humans is the beginning of expert or adept
I also feel that the long lived races, like elves and to a lesser extent, dwarves are a tie in to the history of the world. Where would the Fellowship have been without Elrond's first hand Council?
I think elves living for millennia is a bit much, but several centuries is fine so long as the writer takes the effects of such a lifespan into account.
A human often accomplishes more in 50 years than an elf or dwarf does in 200. Because the human can't afford to be slow or lazy about it.
I imagine an 80-year old elf not having any expertise because they're coasting through life
@@commonviewer2488 honestly thats how it workd on the forgotten realms.
Elves for their first century are pretty happy innocent and sometimes even inmature, after that century, they unlock a memory of when they were in.blissful happyness and perfect harmony with their god.
Realizing that they will never have that lifestyle again they often become bitter. And since there cannot be any new elf souls as it keeps recicling the ones that already exists, they eventually gain the knowledge of their past lifes, making them even more experienced but also more inactive, just like how jerks elf leaders are usually portraited
To me the more important aspect is when we examine the long term consequence of a story pit and see were it goes.
Haha! This solves the core question of why there is no mechanical benefit for your 250 year old elven wizard compared to their 18 year old human wizard counterpart.
Before i watch further, im gonna preemptively disagree. Having a character with a long life span can open the door to story possibilities. Imagine an elf whos melencholic having made some great friends and had to watch as they grew older while he stayed the same.
Look up the anime Frieren, it does that concept really well.
Would love to see what your thoughts are after the video
@TheDungeonCoach I do get what you mean with long lifespans potentially causing some world building problems, thinking on it now, I think I ran into that problem with my own world where the entire History after the big divine war happened in 1000 years. Meaning if Elves lived for 1000 years on average. There'd be some elves who were alive during the old war. (Which has some implications)
I think one way to avoid that but keep the classic long life of elves is to shorten their life span to 200 or 300 years.
As for people being granted longer life spans by a 3rd party, I actually have a Kingdom that's co-ruled by dragons and mortal races. Such a society would undoubtedly result in Dragons intermingling with mortal races. So one idea I had so mortal/dragon pairings can last longer, as part of a marriage ceremony, the dragon shares their own blood with the mortal in a ritual that binds them together in love. Either giving the mortal a longer life span or tying their life with the dragon's life.
@@323starlight This is a far more elegant way to express my issues with this idea. It doesn't hit every issue I have with it but it is certainly better articulated.
I agree you can with ease shorten the life span of an elf to a mere 2x or 3x of humans and keep them feeling special and long lived. 5e lore has it something along the lines of 10x which is a lot.
I love the stuff with dragons, its kind of like Eragon where dragon rideres become imortal when they get their dragon. Again, that's not an advocacy for imortality but I like the idea that a couple has a spell placed on them to share their life span. It could be that this reduces the other members life span a bit but brings up the other making it a great sacrifice. This sparks thoughts of Beren and Luthien, very poetic.
Also Frieren is very good, Coach should definitely watch it, gives a very good idea of what it'd be like to be the elf.
@@TheDungeonCoach Other point I forgot to mention in my first reply.
I think this is why elves have low birth rates to ensure there aren't that many of them. Also they are reclusive because making friends with people that will die in such a "short" time is very painful.
@@JimyRozeif I recall, in the forgotten Realms setting, Elves have low birthrate because there's a set amount of souls. Elves live, die, spend time in elf heaven, then are reborn into the material plane. They aren't like mortals where more souls are constantly being made.
I ran an alternate history game in D&D. It made it really difficult using the lifespans we were accustomed to from Forgotten Realms (elves living 700 years, for example). King Charles of France (an elf), was a grown adult in the dark ages and still king in 1415.
Yeah, if people live a thousand years my grandpa are going to tell me stories about the Crusade or some random Medieval war
In the homebrew setting I've been low-key plotting, Elves are literally "humans born in the Feywild", and gnomes are literally "halflings born in the feywild" exc... So your human mom could be 8.9 months pregnant, take a short trip to the feywild, and you're born an elf with 5x the lifespan.
I also liked this one line from a Mass Effect game, where an Asari woman was wondering if she wanted to marry a Krogan, and she commented on how, since both Krogan and Asari have such long life spans, it would be a *serious commitment*, not like marrying a human where, even if things aren't great, you wait a few decades and they pass on.
While describing goblins in a recent game, I explained they were an 'evil race' (without using those terms) because they had short lifespans and even higher birth rates. They were constantly low on resources, and overpopulated, on top of their craftsmen only having a fraction of the time to perfect their trade... so it's easier/more effective, for them to steal commodities than create them.
Lifespan to birth rate can explain a lot of the differences between species. If a human family would have 6 children over 80 years, but an elven family would have 3 over 300 years.... that could explain a lot about how they are how they are...
P.S. I liked how a recent "middle-aged elf" character I made lived 200 years, and was just 'working in a shop' that entire time... until he found an Enchanted Sword, became a Hexblade, and *everything* changed Forever!
Yes, in 200 years, you could become an AMAZING smith... but not everyone does that... some folk just 'get by'... and the shorter lifespans of humans might push them to 'striving for excellence' in ways that most elves don't bother with.
It's common for elven young adults to spend their 100s "finding themselves" before they think about settling on a career....
Finally, someone who gets it, the influence of material and economical factors on society as a whole and psychology of an individual.
Cool ideas!
Great perspective on that, I think wildly different lifespans lets you take on different questions about the choices your PC would make.
I love this so much.
I'm not with you on this topic. But I'm also not interested in your setting/lore. I'm a massive fan of DC20 and I hope that the races and traits of DC20 translate easily to the lore of Exandria and Faerun.
Age shouldn't be an issue, but things like no darkvision for elves could be difficult to explain when using a DnD Modul.
Will there be variant races for people who like to play in the forgotten realms?
And thanks for thinking out of the box and encouraging me to do the same!
My favorite "setting-level" balancing idea for elves being insanely practiced at skills and whatnot is that they are extreeeeeemly stagnant. An elf will spend 400 years in semi-isolation becoming borderline supernaturally good at archery. Humans will build on eachother's ideas for 400 years, and when they meet those skilled elf archers on the battlefield, they're bringing field cannons and are starting to experiment with armored vehicles. Another century and by the time the elves have finally started getting societally comfortable with black powder inventions, the humans have split the atom and have started developing applications for it.
Elf: BEHOLD MY 400 year practice of swordsmanship!
Human: Awesome, I call this a GUN. *BANG*
Parry this you filthy casual
@@zeehero7280 Elf: I said BEHOLD!!!
This is a great example
I see the different races as alien humanoids. They have unique biology/philosophy that allows for more varied characters. Not to say that inherently every goblin is chaotic, every gnome is playful, or every elf hypercompetent, but that there's an earned reputation and expectations of what they should be like as a collective, with individuals upholding or going against what is conventional among them.
I like how they have elves in the Elder Scrolls lore where they do live a bit longer, but they dont have offspring very often.
Also they are ASSHOLES! 🤣
Altmer will live for a millennia or more, and they have a whole field of study about how to walk slower so you can live even longer! the decadence of having too much time!
Just don't use elves or other long lived folks if you can't deal with it. Well written elves take into consideration their long lifespan and the unique perspective that brings, Frieren is the most recent exemple that comes to mind. I've already roleplayed as characters with thousands of years, it is perfectly doable and a valid perspective, but requires a little more from the player and from the GM to work.
D&D tried standardizing race life spans with Monsters of the Multiverse, and it just made everything feel more boring. If you really want make sure elves aren't just better, include long-lived as a racial feature with a point value. Possibly add a negative effect to go with a long lifespan, or inversely add a bonus to having a short lifespan. The short candle burns brightest. I love the versatility of the system so far, but this seems to shut down possibilities, not expand them.
I greatly respect your opinion and this is an interesting discussion. Your twists are creative and would be fun to explore. HOWEVER, I don't have a problem with the original lifespan tropes or roleplaying the characters you say you don't want to put your players through. Your proposals are not really superior, just different. If someone is already familiar with Tolkien races, then it actually takes more mental energy to learn your new lore. Your DC20 system definitely will fill a need. Your lore will find a smaller group of adherents but a greater number who are inspired to integrate some of your lore into theirs or make their own variations. I would be happy with that.
For the whole level 1 dwarf - peasants stay at level 1 for their whole life, so like... it's kinda like how a an old village guy can become a level 1 warlock
Isn't that just a human with pointy ears?
But yeah I agree, this kind of stuff doesn't translate well to a game option. Tolkien's elves wouldn't work at all as a standard playable race, and a character like Frieren would be really hard to pull off without pissing the rest of the party
I've ad that kind of problem before when trying to translate fictional settings to RPGs and you just have to nerf it to the point of unrecognizability in order for it to work
I would argue that it can be done, but it'd need to be like the perfect table.
I have been thinking about doing a one on one dnd game and that sort of thing would thrive on having the player be something like Frieren or an Eldar.
In my campaign world, the elves used to live longer, like 1000+ years, but over the last few hundred years they started aging faster and dying off younger and younger (down to like 20% longer than humans by campaign time) due to Reasons, and it's a major point of cultural loss and existential terror for them.
I don't always fully agree with The Dungeon Coach, but up until now I usually understand the perspective and can respect the thought process. This is the first time I think he's had a bad take though (no disrespect, everyone is entitled to a few).
The alien nature is what makes them interesting. I hate when I'm in a campaign and races are just a mechanical choice. I'd rather have 3 race options that feel fundamentally different in roleplay over 30 that all act human. Maybe a spicier take... I'd rather be in a campaign that's human only, than one that has human, short squat human, and pointy ear human.
The difference of life span adds to and at times defines the cultural dynamic. Removing it just to put it back kinda makes your point moot. It’s a pot/kettle thing.
Never had an issue with different ages. This hasn’t really changed my mind. Goblins feel more feral so it makes sense they would have a shorter life span compared to something like a human. And elves being old is a big part of who they are. I think trying to explain to a player why elves only live till 80 is way harder than explaining what someone was doing for that time. I saw a great video by Overly Sarcastic Productions about sequels and she basically explained how in stories you have high detail moments (during the story), and low detail moments (before/after the story). You don’t have to explain all the people your blacksmith taught or all the business troubles they’ve been through; because none of that is important to the story. You can just say “My character was a blacksmith for 146 years and then…” and take proficiency in smith’s tools. The only time I had an issue with this was when I was running my first campaign and I would try to make stuff sound old and one of my characters say something about how they’re old enough to remember it but it’s just something you get better at.
Edit: Just thought of more I wanted to say. None of this is to say that I like the lifespans of D&D races. I think too many of them have ages that just don’t make sense. I don’t really understand why Dwarves have longer lifespans than humans, feels like they should be about the same. Sometimes this stuff goes too far because developers think it makes the race more interesting to have a different age range when it really isn’t. I’m okay with races being the same as humans most of the time but saying “all ancestries have the same lifespan” is just too limiting and kind of emerson breaking for me. As for the lifespan altering world building stuff you mentioned, none of that is mutually exclusive with elves with long lifespans. What if a human and an elf get married but the elf knows that their spouse will die before them so they’re willing to adventure and sacrifice to extend their spouse’s life. Also, in elf society, elves don’t have long lives, just lives. Even an elf would sacrifice quite a lot for a longer life. Humans’ lifespan has been increasing constantly throughout history but that doesn’t mean that we are just satisfied. We continue to push our lifespan further because no matter how long we as a species live, we still don’t want to die. I know this is getting too intense for a youtube comment and I should probably end it here but I just want to ask that you don’t make all ancestries live the same amount of time in DC20. Rules on lifespan altering based on conditions is fine but please don’t get rid of ancestry lifespans; or at least add them as an optional feature.
While I understand the issue with wondering what your character had been doing for the past century before finally becoming an adventurer, I still think it's better to keep it like that. Not only is there more flavor in saying your spry elf is 70 or your grizzled kobold is 6, but there can also be legit story reasons for the length of time.
For example, your character was a priest for decades, but only now got a calling from their deity to do more. Maybe it's because they were always going through the motions before, but turned their faith around. Or maybe another player's character has caught the eye of the deity, so the old priest is called on to travel with this other character.
Also, this whole discussion made me think up a concept that I want to try. My long lived race has some kind of cursed item (maybe the bottle for a genie patron). This item is slowly siphoning off their life force, making them likely to reach the end of their lifespan by the end of the campaign. They start off at the equivalent to 20-30 in human years, but gradually appear older as they level up. Either the DM or I could slip in details like a few streaks of gray hair or some wrinkles. It likely wouldn't be till a nice chunk of the way in that the party pauses after one of these moments and says "wait, didn't you have black hair?" / etc. which would fit the idea that they wouldn't notice subtle changes over time, until they pause to take in the full picture and see how much he's actually changed.
If they then deal with the cursed item, I loose my patron and maybe an invocation that fits the curse. I can't use the bottle for a while, until becoming a new class to have a new source of magic (probably cleric or druid, depending on how things play out in story). Then I pick a different invocation to not mechanically loose anything , and my bottle becomes a magic item that will have some of the prior patron features, but maybe swap other features for something else to show I no longer have the same connection.
6:30 if you understood the species cultures you are talking about, you’d know why they wait till later in life, it’s not hard to figure out either, if a species life’s longer childhood is a longer period, it’s been in many fantasy stories
11:42 do you hate the collective fantasy?
I very strongly disagree.
I have a character in my campaign that his history started with another characters father and after not seeing each other for 40 years the father passed away and he teams up with the son to continue the fathers quest.
That is an awesome origin story.
So, i dont see why we can't have both? I agree the things you say are cool, but you don't have to give things up.
One of the fantasies of playing an elf is their lifespan. I agree that it shouldn't be 1000 years, but 500 seems more practical, and maybe they have a racial connection to magical places where they must live the remainder if their middle age and elderly lives (an Elven Graveyard, if you will), and because of whatever natural connection they have, they can't leave it, so they're forced to send out their youngest members into the rest of the world.
I think that fixes the problem of players picking elderly elves. Don't worry about restrictions on character concepts, thats what races are there for, restrictions!
Dwarves could have singular expertises in crafting or such, where they're incredible at one thing, but they're average at everything else. Sure, a 400 year old dwarf player COULD theoretically make the greatest sword ever seen to a human, but it would take 10 years to do it. Why doesn't this craftsman have that kind of weapon on his person then? He made it in backstory. Maybe that's true, but maybe the dwarven gods refuse to let then us the tools that they made. They must give it to someone else.
I think there are more interesting ways to play into class fantasies than homogenization
To me the bigger issue is that we don't treat these races with different lifespans as different ENOUGH. Races that live so long would have completely different perspectives on life, on what's important, on what urgency means, and most pertinent to D&D players, they'd have different perspectives on adventuring. They'd have very small families, since the need to procreate for continuation of the species would be a different calculation. The decision to bring an elven child into the world would never be taken lightly, because as Tolkien so well illustrated, they lack "the gift of man" which is to be ALLOWED to freely pass from this world.
To take on the life of an adventurer - even for what is comparatively such a small percentage of their potential lifespan - would require a purpose and calling far beyond that of a human, because when you see so much change in the world, the rise and fall of human kingdoms, the constant bloodshed and cruelty, it takes something on a grander scale to stand out as being worth the risk. Every good PC backstory should answer the question of why they became an adventurer instead of living a normal life, but for an elf or other long-lived species this question should be absolutely foundational.
And when that IS taken into consideration, the character you're able to embody can have the kind of measured grace we see in Tolkien's work (for instance), with a mix of both placing great importance on the simple pleasures of dancing and beauty, and a deep melancholy when considering their short-lived friends and the hard times they must endure. After all, this particular dark episode represents such a small portion of an elf's untold years, but for their human friends, every day of pain and misfortune is one of but a precious, fleeting collection of days that represent their entire lives. Such is the burden of long life or immortality.
So, while I appreciate your take on things, I would miss the opportunity to step into those shoes and live that experience.
Have fun with your worldbuilding, its yours, you can do anything you want, I don't think many people is going to take the DC20 system and use that part of your lore though. Personally I don't mix races in my homebrew, but its ok, its just lore, do whatever you want, just don't tie most of the mechanics to it, or it may be harder to adapt
2:56 yeah, that’s kinda the point, elven craftsmanship has always been described as beyond that of mans
You worry to much about Ballance between the species that you missed the five and take between the different species, plus doing this takes away from the collective fantasy most are accustomed to
11:27 😂😂😂 Coach “ that’s so much more interesting to me than”the version without the lore you don’t know 😂😂😂😂
Jesus what has happening to all the 5e creators when trying to do their own thing 😂😂😂😂
What if elves are just REALLY slow learners? 🤣Because every lesson needs to begin and end with a tea ceremony that takes a day to complete...
I like the ideia, but biologically smaller animals usually live less. I think a solution would be for the life spans be kinda close: small ancestries live 70 years, medium ancestries live 80 years and "large" (like giantborn) live 90 years on average.
Love this, I have always had issues with 1st level characters being a 200 year old Elf. Just felt wrong.
Elves practice archery and sword play for hundreds of years so they get a +1 lol...
Answering the question coached (ha) in this video: It would make all the fantasy races feel much more similar as a descriptive number that rarely comes up in game play is homogenized. One less element to set the various people apart. Differences between people give them different perspectives, cultures and taboos. It makes the elves more like "pointy eared humans" than the alien and incomprehensible elves of Tolkien. We could just as easily jettison all races except humans and play with one ancestry that has different clans, tribes, factions and cultures.
Personally, I would prefer to set each ancestry's longevities myself. And allow there to be long-lived and short-lived races. That makes things more interesting, and we take the challenge of worldbuilding to accommodate it in stride. Giants, Dragons, Elves, Dwarves and others have had vast sprawling domains over tens of thousands of years of history. Maybe their advances brought them long lives as their knowledge and mastery increased, perhaps it was their birthright. Commoners remain at level 0 for however long they are commoners, and when they start practicing combat skills, whether magical or martial, is when they can become adventurers.
I think that's kind of a common theme with the DC20 system. Instead of having to play around with ability scores everything is just based on your "prime stat".
Overall Coach can do what works best for his vision of his setting. For my games I’ll probably still have at least certain ancestries be long lived. The other reason ideas are cool too, though!
On the contrary maybe Elven society doesn't evolve much in terms of technology or medicine etc because they live so long. Less new ideas are introduced less ingenuity is needed and of course less need to make a lasting impact on the world you leave behind
I like the direction. Situation or context dependent lifespans instead of entitlements of ancestry is just more fertile grounds for storytelling TTRPGs. Keep up the good work.
You can go the [removed the series in case of spoilers lol] route, who has the most normal versions of fantasy races as possible; but interpreted through a very naturalistic and logical manner - meaning that they are distinct enough to warrant being their own species, no matter how similarly humanoid they look. And as different species, they are fundamentally unable to crossbreed - and in the rare occasion it happens, the offspring comes out a little weirder.
Which is why I think DC20's interpretation of these races is so cool! If their lifespans are so similar, it naturally justifies the variety of interracial options given to the player - simply because it'd be much easier for races to raise children of mixed heritage when their partner lives as long as they do. It's a nice and convenient way to coherently mix lore and mechanics into one. Plus, just that idea alone can inspire a more original take on fantasy worldbuilding unique to DC20; giving it its own identity despite how obviously derivative it is.
(rip my heart 😅, tis the fate of an edited comment haha)
Dungeon Meshi is a really excellent example of the classic life span setup. Shows the kinds of stories the come from that type of setting too. Hope DC20's can replicate that natural feeling
So I had actually come across this issue when trying to come up with a dynamic and mysterious lich that was about 200 years old. Three of my players wanted to play as elves and one of them even decided to have been born in the same aria as the lich. Do to the similar age and their also similar backstories there was no way I could see for these two not to know each-other. I solved it by giving the now not a lich a youth stealing artifact and increasing his age to more that of like 2000 years. The point was to say that he was stealing the youth of younger elves to live longer. When the player found out that they knew the big bad they had said it helped them feel a small bit of the mortality of elves.
I'm imagining the lich using the artifact to make the elf into an old man or woman, and having to defeat him to stop looking like everyones great great grandparent and get back to normal 🤣
I just made elves a non-playable race. They are enigmatic observers and part-time defenders against the schemes of evil gods. They are nigh on immortal and indeed are the best at everything due to having millennia to train and study. In the current age, the elves have been gone for ~2000 years now, and have left their immaculate structures and crafts to the mortal races. There's various mysteries surrounding why they went missing, and problems to face with the magical items they left behind.
Though the name recognition is nice to have when introducing a new player to your setting, there comes a point that your version of an elf is just a pointy-eared human with variable fey connections. Much like my objections to remakes that have almost not connection to the original source material, I think its better to make something new than to twist existing concepts out of wack. Especially with a flexible ancestry system like in DC20, why not make a new fantasy humanoid?
I have many thoughts, so thank you for the thought-provoking video! Firstly, a campaign that runs from levels 1-20 might only take a year in the campaign timeline. How crazy is that? You can reach god-tier in a year. Why aren't all elves level 20 in every class if they live that long? Conversely, age for characters in game doesn't matter that much - they're never going to be adventuring long enough to get proper old. It's only a measure of backstory, really. ANYWAY:
What if your "functional" age (i.e. ability to adventure) was related to your class? Wizards must be older, because learning magic takes so long, monks are functional well into their 60s-70s because of their training, clerics just live for ages because their healing powers fight off diseases, etc., sorcerers live fast and die young, and so on.
He is talking about ALL fantacy races in D&D right? So in that minsent dragon's also have the same lifespan as humans... that doesn't work now does it? It is funny though how he ignores the fact that most exotic D&D races age the same way as humans/have the same lifespan. Dragonborn, Yuan-Ti, Lizardfolk, Changeling, Tabaxi.
The 1st reaction is "eeeeew" but there can indeed be interesting ideas being brought forward as a result of that hard take on elves.
To start with the negative reaction, for me, it's precisely living centuries upon centuries (up to millennia) that make elves elves.
And besting that human blacksmith wouldn't happen outside of rare cases because, as a direct result of that longevity, elves don't possess the drive that humans do. When you have centuries to do anything, you'll never going to rush doing it & most just wouldn't bother.
It's the shorter life of human that push them to accomplish so much & why progress happens much faster generation upon generations.
That elf who spent 500 years training in the mountains to hone his archery skills? He comes back to human cities where they use gunpowder now. 🤷🏻♂️
HOWEVER, I still think it can be useful to break from tradition because the game needs to stand out in some ways to what already exists.
That simplification explaining the cool possibility of mixing heritages easily & having mechanical gameplay effects as a result is good IMO
The idea of longevity _overall_ varying between empires, environments can also be interesting to explore. :)
the "i wanna play an old character" Argument is no different if you would want to play an old human. What did they do in the last 50-60 years of there lifes? compared to the 20-ish year old rest of the party? if the old human is a wizard, than he clearly must have failed alot as a wizard, since he spent atleast 40 years doing no progress as learning magic. Thats why don't let players play old characters if your starting before 10th level.
Also, different lifespans gives different views on the world. E:g. Elves maybe wouldn't help humans to overthrow a goverment, cuz in an blink of an elven eye the old human rule died of old age and is replaced by a new one. why act know when we can just wait for the next.
It also creates interesting dynamics. E.g. nobody knows anymore why the dragons are at war with Human kingdom X. The reason lies 2000 years back where some King killed the Sister of the Dragon and ravaged their lands. Now in the present where the Kingdomborders are much different the Dragon still holds the Grudge on any Kings in a specific area, which is now Kingdom X.
Regarding the discussion of “Elves have hundreds of years more to practice.” Maybe. If a 1,000 year elf behaves like a life-span-limited human, but with a stretched out lifespan, sure. But why do that? How many times does the average human drastically change their profession in the 40 odd years that they are gainfully employed? Why would an elf care the same about materialistic pursuits after the first century of acquiring their fortune (if they are even in to such a thing, which I doubt they are.) Maybe they care about achieving a level of craftsmanship perfection where the aim is beauty, not utility. Or their craft suffers from the law of diminishing returns, so that the extra 50 years devoted to weaving were methods to perfectly thread the blanket but doesn’t improve the product in a practical sense; Instead, the Elvin blanket a work of art; Or the perfection is only discernible by others of the same supreme (but basically needless) level of skill.
Instead of gutting the idea of an Elf, design a world around their unique nature, and start playing them as if they aren’t human.
I agree that that it also feels bad for characters to have massive blank spots in their backstory and the way I reconciled that for elves was to imagine they had less drive as a ancestry than humans to commit and get things done in short periods of time, but that also doesn't feel good XD
I do have an alternative though that I have used based on a reddit post I saw years ago. The relies on the concept that certain ancestries reproduce in more magical ways. For instance, dwarves carve their own kin out of stone while elves are animals and plants that have lived a long time and gained sentience. Having the lifespan of ancestries be comprised on multiple periods of varying intellect sounds like a fun way for them to be known for their long life span but it not be overpowering narratively. A dwarf could have been vaguely aware of events around themselves when they were still one with the stone and then may return to stone again after a duration closer to the span of human adulthood.
I've had a ton of fun brainstorming the consequences of this and other ancestry life cycles so hope others have fun nerding out about this too XD
This is a very logical take, if you have so much time, you get lazy.
Coach, while I appreciate the sentiment, that you're trying to make choices meaningful and not pigeonhole a character based on their ancestry, I don't think removing that distinction is the most interesting way to handle it.
As a rule, if homogenous aging is established in the setting and everyone at the table is on board, that's fine. But...
It really kind of kills what makes different ancestors unique. If I play an elf who's people live 1000 years, that's an important part of my background. It affects my relationship with the goblins and humans in the party. I'm not playing an elf because I get +2 dex (not in my system), I'm playing an elf because that's the fantasy I want to explore.
As far as reconciling this difference with Gameplay at the table, I think there are several satisfactory methods. One is, of course, just to hand wave things. I level up just like everyone else, and explain it as I'm learning things I never was exposed to back in the safety of my homeland.
At the other end of the spectrum, if you trust the other people at your table, you can actually have meaningful mechanical differences for your ages. In the burning wheel, for example, older characters have backgrounds which have given them more skill points. Else can be extremely powerful because of this. And each race also has a unique mechanic. Elves, for example, have a grief score that accumulates overtime, and they actually retire and fade away if they accumulate too much grief.
Ultimately, if the table is happy, then there's no harm. But I want to make my ancestry choice more meaningful, not less.
I always used the racial lifespans as an average for the species. Where an Elf can lived to be a 1000 years old only if they avoid being beheaded, cursed, eaten by a dragon, etc. Because in a sufficiently High magic setting any individual should be capable of becoming an ageless Demi-God.
Although if you really wanted Elves to have human-length lifespans, a cool idea would be to play up the time shenanigans of the Feywild. Imagine a human village having to deal with an Elf that shows up every generation, but to the Elf's perspective only days have passed between visits, like in that one Rick and Morty episode.
I kinda see your point, but as elves, dwarfs, gnomes, and so on, are just humans with slightly unique features by now, removing this last great difference raises the question, why not make them a human subrace allready?
Of course such long living folks also bring a problem. Super Adventureres. By pure logic, if a human can become a max level fighter in like 10 years, what stops him from spending the next 10 years to also become a max level monk? And a person that can live for 500 years should have the time to become max level in all classes.
An other problem for me is the "cross breeding" bitween all this species. Your world would either need that all mixed folkes are infertile, or that there is a great prejudice against mixed couples and their offspring. Otherwise logic dictates that all this different races would mix into one single kind over a few generations.
Imagine having to roleplay someone who has lived hundreds of years, but miraculously hasn't spent any of that time learning a trade, becoming proficient in some kind of craft or musical instrument, can't fight or wield magic any better than a random level 1 commoner doofus, doesn't have any advanced knowledge or wisdom about any topic, doesn't have a large array of allies and useful contacts, and as per the lore typically hangs around a small village in the woods hunting wild game to survive but isn't even particularly skilled in doing that either. It's like in World of Warcraft when someone turns off experience gain so that can play endlessly without ever leveling up. Then one day they meet a few losers in a tavern and WHOA, look who suddenly figured out how to retain information and gain new skills!
From a D&D lore perspective I would disagree, but I have read Worlds Without Number (WWN) and the idea from that book’s lore that everyone is the same race but look different for many varied reasons eventually grew on me. What is presented here is not a deal breaker for me in DC20. 👍
I like this change. Also world building wise, it doesn’t make sense that Elves didn’t rule the world. If they’re the longest living race, you could build up numbers over 100 years and then just decimate all other armies and rule the world.
9:55 you do realize you are describing different reasons a species lives longer than others right?
If so
You do realize those are some of the reasons in long lived species lore right?
If so, you know you are being disingenuous about saying it doesn’t make sense and than telling us the reasons it’s made sense since they were created decades ago, right?
Or do you know and you are hoping no one catches on?
Or
Are you really that unaware of the origins of long lived species in fantasy lore?
For my world, i didn't cut them down to one size, but I drastically shorten their life span so humans are 80 Dwarfs are 120 and Ekves are 150 so their still live a lot longer but not that extrem
4:12 or just make half breeds not be able to reproduce, I mean it’s not that hard my dude 😂😂😂 you just kinda exposing yourself as not knowing fantasy lore like you are claiming
It does make sense, just not to you, but it does to the majority of its fans and creators my dude 😂😂😂
1:12 humans having a shorter life has always been why longer lives species are surprised by what humans accomplish, they look at the little amount of time and that’s all they see, elves have longer lives so they plan, study, and practice longer than we do, so humans knowing they have short lives make the most of everyday and get more accomplished in less time, it’s kinda key to the origin of their fantasy and how they interact on a larger time frame, adds a lot to their cultures as well, but then again, your game has it to where if I’m smart enough I can wield a large two handed weapon
7:07 well you forgot to mention most forms of fantasy including d&d and other ttrpgs explain this with the extra bonuses and things they get, where they are specific to things the culture would bestow, humans have choices and can place them bonuses where they want, it represents the humans ability to diversify as well as focus, and on top of that, gives credence to the humans accomplish a lot in so little time because they know they have less of it, and humans tend to pass on the plan to their descendants, which builds upon itself faster than other species that live longer, humans may not be the best at things or be able to live as long, but humans and other species that live shorter spans than elves sure always have those species worried, it’s not a disadvantage to be human, it’s a five and take like all species before power creep from wotc walks in to later additions
I love the Detroit lions shirt. I kind of disagree with the same lifespan thing even though in a game like d&d where all things are becoming equal it sort of makes sense. In a game where you use points to build a character, much preferred imo, it can make far more sense if the different races cost different amounts when the older races cost more because they start more skilled.
4:35 well, I guess you can take away what makes elves who they are, but I don’t think this is a good idea, and if I was interested in your system, this would make me question your design decisions and goals way more than I already do
I've always pictured Goblins and Orcs having lower lifespans due to their diets. They're carnivores, or at least primarily carnivores. Which means their diets are limited, which means their nutrients are limited. And I would understand this as them lacking the proper enzymes in their stomachs to digest food properly from other sources. All of that cholesterol and lack of proper nutrients must really shorten a lifespan.
Tolkein did what you said with folks from different regions having different lifespans. For example the Men (that is what Humans are called in M-E) of Neumenor live for hundreds of years. Elves have to live in their homeland or carry a piece of it with them or they lose their immortality. Melkor the dark lord could enhance life spans for hundreds, thousands of years, or even indefinitely. Hobbits lived longer lives because they typically lived stress free lives with all of their needs met, and they ate a lot of vegetables. I'm not sure why the Dwarves lived longer 😂
When I learned a D&D halfling could be just as strong as a human, I assumed it was Star Trek future where humans can live biblical lifespans. In most settings, seems obvious most long lived races would die in accidents or combat hundreds of years before old age. Just say everyone can live to 150, 300 or 600. The maximum isn't the median.
I've always had the problem with the stock lore having human timelines for history and ancient lost secrets that would have been in the living memory of several common races.
Yeah, I can't stand elves/dwarves living so long. It creates a lot of weird problems. So in my campaigns I always have those be exaggerations and they only live twice as long at most, of course with most only living slightly longer than humans.
This is such a wildly unpersuasive video. I think there are valid arguments for having the standard lifespans of races be different, but the idea that it is more interesting when there is no variation is just not one I buy into at all. Look at Mass Effect with Salarians and Asari. The two species have societies shaped by their lifespans and it makes each character you meet among them informed by that context. This is interesting. It is way better than arbitrarily deciding that the average human lifespan is universal because it makes world building somewhat easier for you.
There was many more points that I made than that, but I think it will be easier to have the system itself have this default lifespan, with many other options to increase lifespan, apart from race alone.
And if people do want to have races that live longer, they can just do that, very simple addition if that’s the type of world, do you want to play in 👍🏼💜
@@TheDungeonCoach I didn't address that point because it was one of your weaker ones. Those storylines are in no way exclusive to a fantasy world where all the species live the exact same length of time, nor do I think they are much more interesting in that context. I think you're just flattening the differences for really no discernable benefit other than ease of world building. I think that even if you shorten the gap between lifespans having meaningful difference is better in most cases.
I think a much more interesting solution to the narrative dissonance of these long lived people being the same level as youngish humans is to attach mechanical differences to those species based on age. This could be something like elves having distinct life stages, where the magic which keeps them alive so long affects them differently at different ages, perhaps making them wild natural nomads/beserkers in early adulthood and natural mages as they grow. Or giving dwarves less skills as they grow older, but more expertise (or the equivalent). This is much more interesting to me than just flattening them to all be the same.
3:41 or you could admit you aren’t a good world builder, it’s not a bad thing, not everyone can handle it, but come on, with how many dozens have come before you and did just that, without holes in their story, no continuity errors, and loads of history tying it all together, like come on, if elves don’t make sense, why are the red wizards so popular and have such good lore?
It’s okay, coach, not everyone can be like greenwood, Tolkien, and many many many more
Yeah this was a really weird take. "Different cultures would have different perspectives and that's bad".
@@bryan__m according to dungeon coach it is, like that’s the whole point of elves to humans, to orcs, to many others. and if anyone ever before him can do it and it not cause writing issues, he’s just lazy and doesn’t understand the genre he’s attempting to design for, my table calls him four stat guy and laughs at his attempts, we are also disgusted at the idea he’s getting bigger at the claim of being the new dnd, like damn, the mystic portal is leagues ahead of the rest of the DND carbon copy cookie cutter games everyone’s praising, and this is the main reason so many games are innovating anything.
A common trope for long-lived fantasy races like elves is that they tend to be much slower to change as a group, and often more insular. Both qualities would provide plenty of reason for an elf to not start adventuring for a century or two; I don’t see your need for exhaustive backstory generation in order for things to make sense.
Of course, the opposite would hole for short-lived races. The societal change in a goblin band after the birth of an exceptional individual (e.g. Newton, Hannibal, Da Vinci, or Shaka Zulu) would seem almost instantaneous to nearby humans, who would easily underestimate the result.
But why would the Elf not get any better at the normal things in life, they are not physically considered infants up to 150. It's not just about adventuring, they should be masters (prof bonus 6 and/or Expertise in 5E terms) in at least a quarter of the skills (and/or 2 or 3 Tools) by the time they start adventuring.
Very cool. In my world it is a genetic modification available to the nobles and rulers.
Even Hotter Take: I think you're right. I've thought about this myself. The age old story of one character finding love and friendship, but dealing with the depression of outliving them by 100s or 1000s of years is a bit overdone at this point. That, and if Elves were so long lived, it's weird that they don't rule a fantasy world through the shadows and pull all strings in secret.
It's an interesting concept in fantasy literature, but it just raises unnecessary societal questions in a TTRPG that usually don't get answered in DND adventures. Might as well take it out altogether.
At 9:00 that is Blue Zones and really exists on Earth.
I'm going to have to respectfully disagree as well.
Elves vs Humans from a racial perspective is no different than Quality vs Quantity.
Elves live long lives, have less children, and spend a lot of their time meditating or learning to perfect their tasks.
(Mechanically, I'm surprised they don't start with Expertise in a Skill or Tool.)
Humans on the other hand have short lives by comparison, have several children, and spend most of their time hopping from craft to craft to leave their mark in the world themselves or through their children.
(Mechanically, this explains their solid stat spread or the Feat if they chose a more focused ambition.)
An Elf will train themselves by shooting 10,000 arrows until they perfect it, whereas Humans will simply field a regiment of Archers to fire those 10,000 arrows.
Long lived races such as Dwarves and Elves are terrified of Humans despite their skills and established kingdoms for a reason. It's because Humans are like ants, constantly breeding, spreading, throwing themselves at tasks until it's "good enough" before moving on to the next task.
While making everyone have the same lifespan is an interesting concept, I'm worried it will just feel like the alien races in Star Trek. (A Human with makeup.)
Didn't want to make a second comment, so I'll jist reply here.
A series you may enjoy that touches on the long lives of elves and the humans in addition to human society that surround them.
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End
You can either watch the anime or read the manga, but this series actually touches on this subject.
Don't have as big a disdain for long lived races. The weird limitation can create intresting stories and people in the comments have pointed out a few excellent examples.
But i do agree that having a more flexible reason for long lifespans is better for a game. You can still have similar stories as the examples people give but also remove those limitations if you don't want a story that fits into that. Though i do think it will be important to give people areas where they can play out the classic storylines within the setting. Sometimes its more comfortable for people to rely on strong rails for their character stories. In the future i hope we can get details on specific places with strong built-in narratives for players to use.
Overall i like that the setting will reflect the mechanics of the game and the variety within the game. Its not so specific that i feel i can't hombrew a setting but it still has the spirit of diversity present. Oh also big fan of a settings that shows the intermingling of cultures and species. For me its interesting to see the mixing of things and off putting when cultures/people feel like they have no impact on each other and are instead somehow stuck in perfectly sectioned off boxes.
I think maybe the OP/Video channel owner has had bad experiences with poorly written long lived characters.
Becuase it can be done well.
First viewer squad 🎉
This just sounds LAZY to me...
Yeah, Antonio is really cool.
10:18 yeah like the feywild
I agree with you for 1 simple reason.
The traditional approach to elves as you described was inherited by Tolkien. In his world, elves and dwarfs are so closely tied to nature that they are closer to trees and rocks than they are to humans. That’s why they are so hard to convince to join in the fight against darkness, it would be like if you literally tried to ask a rock to help you.
Modern DND games look so different from these old war games, but we inherited these weird traditions (that made sense at one point) that get in the way of the kinds of game that people want to have. DC20 is, in my eyes, all about breaking from these traditions in order to run better games.
Your elves and dwarfs should absolutely be different from Tolkien. I certainly don’t run elves like they are in Tolkien and I doubt anyone disagreeing with you is running immortal elves in a way that makes any sense. You should, however, replace the old flavor with new flavor. Elves could be ANYTHING! Think of the possibilities when you liberate yourself from the traditional flavor! I’m excited to see how it turns out.
4:25 yes you are
This is a really good point, both on a world-building level and a roleplaying level. Tolkien's races are built for Middle Earth, but don't transpose well into generic fantasy settings. Every world should define its own peoples, rather than a clumsy cut-and-paste. Love the idea of people with different lifespans due to factors other than birth.
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I also feel that there should be something alien to the mindset of a non-human character. If you're just selecting this or that mechanical bonus, but the character's behavior is indistinguishable from a human, then why not just make everyone a human?
I disagree tremendously with your last parragraph. It's impossible to portray an alien mindset to a human because we are all humans. Creatures with completely alien mindsets are NPCs or monsters, not playable options. The reason you pick an ancestry other than human is to have a diferent morphology, which can affect your mindset. It's also possible to be because you want a numerical bonus. To be honest, I'm on the camp that tolkenian races should be human options (as well as goblins and gnomes), but that doesn't mean other ancestry options don't have merit, like beastfolk, centaurs, dragons, oozes, robots and things of the sort that have a physiology very diferent from a human but could still have human minds perfectly fine, bonus point if humans don't have bonuses of any kind and the other ancestries have drawbacks built into them.
@@Ditidos I said "something alien," not "completely alien." "Completely alien" should only be the realm of unplayable monsters. Of course any player can only draw on and interpret from their own lived experience, but that doesn't make reckoning with those different from us impossible. I'm just thinking of something that could simply be one or two bullet points in the character's personality/background notes to engage with. And I stand by my opinion that fantasy peoples should be about the world first, and mechanics second.
@@wushubear1 Every character should have one or two bullet points to influence their behavior, sure (well, if the player wants to, but I think it definetly enrich the experience). But that applies to human characters as well. I just disagree that playable options main thing is having a diferent mentality, they should give interesting morphology to play around with or interesting mechanical options (an example of the latter are Pathfinder 2e elfs who are fastest than anyone else) and having strong ties with the setting could be cumbersome, it should have enough space for GMs to ignore the default setting unless it's a TTRPG made for a preexisting setting (like a Star Wars game, an Avatar game and so on). Of course, GMs should absolutely ban any ancestries they don't want for any reason, not fitting their setting included.
So I’m building a setting based on a lot of Greek myths… and I can’t see the gods be okay with anybody living a long time; so bringing down the elven lifespan was something I was considering. But reading these comments it seems like I might want to do something to preserve their culture
This is where you have to separate a local homebrew from a core campaign setting.
This is a cool idea, but it is too far from the concepts that you are already using.
Longlife is the core of an elf throughout its mythology. It would be an unnecessary shock to the average player.
This is true for the other races and their lifespan.
This is part of the reflection of the real world that helps people connect to the fantasy. For example, if my dog had the intelligence of a human, she would still have a much shorter lifespan.
I disagree with the notion that the old age thing is problematic. Your example was a 150 year old dwarf setting out as a low lvl adveturer not making sense but would it make any more sense for an 85 year old woman to step out the door one day where shes lived, had grandkids and the like just to spontaneously pick up a stick and go start punching dragons?
No hate though, always a fan and cant wait to get your books ❤️
Well thought out with good thinking points. I'll add another example I've seen work well in books, specifically the He Who Fights With Monsters series, where for someone to live longer, they have to be more magically powerful. In that series, and a few others I've read, lifespan is tied to how much you've "leveled up" or something similar, and I think that works well too.
Something i loved about the LotR books vs movies was the lore that gets exposed about the elves of Lothlorien. When the fellowship stops in the forest visiting the elves there, they left and most of them thought it had only felt like a couple of days when in truth they had been there for around a month. They explained (roughly) that the elves magically experience time in a different way to the point that it affects the lands around them.
I've had an idea that in my world, pretty much every race is just a magically evolved version of humans, for example, elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, but this doesn't just apply to humans, monsters, dragons, and other such creatures are born through magic evolution.
Anyways, with that in mind, elves and dwarves do live longer than humans but not that much longer, maybe as long as half elves, if not maybe a bit longer.
Elves used to be immortal, but due to some in lore stuff that would be way too long for a TH-cam comment, they're not anymore.
There is a line in Dimension 20 where a character admits they weren't always a firefighter. Before they became a firefighter, they were in high school, and they became a firefighter after graduating.
This was a funny scene, because nobody needed to know that.
So I disagree HARD about having to come up with 150 years of backstory. We only care about the relevant bits, which might just be the last 5 years. Its a backstory, not a resume.
Nah gonna have to disagree on this one. The change wont stop me from supporting by any means. Different life spans are natural between species. No reason there cant be magical means of extending life as well
i actually kind of like the “people live longer because they have access to certain magic” idea - it fits really well with a lot of folklore and mythology. even gods were sometimes only gods because they ate fruit from a tree that granted immortality. also, immortal being something you gain also implies that it might be something you can *lose*, and that’s a compelling concept all on its own!
although, i don’t think some species naturally living longer would immediately mean that they become the rulers of every society. lore keepers and experts, certainly. but nothing kills a civilization worse than being unable to adapt to change, and i can’t imagine things much less adaptable than a bunch of elven nobles who have *personally* been running the kingdom the same way for 500 years. they might provide a lot of stability, but you can always have too much of a good thing.
I respectfully disagree with you here. But i think you are not familiar with the elven or dwarven lore and therefore dont understand why it makes sense.
Elfs reach maturity at the age of 100 years. During this growin up Phase they are more focused on enjoying the beaty of the world, they would stare at a flower for hours, enjoy their Reverie(Elven Trance that shows them life in heaven).
They know they have lots of time to live and thats why they are not in a hurry to grow up, learn a skill, join a wizard acadamy, join a martial training etc.
You dont need to fill in these 100 years because they are still a child and usually nothing important happens in there life during that time.
Same thing with dwarves they reach maturity at the age of 50, but they spent year and decades on improving their craft, learning their clan and family traditions, learn to mine, learn to smith, learn to sharpen etc.
Their life is also not very adventurery like before that age thats why it makes sense for them to become and adventurer way later on in live because they are not mature yet.
I think most D&D player arent actually aware of the lore behind these races and would profit from the rich lore when roleplaying them.
I suggest you watch the veideo of MrRhexx on Elves and Dwarves he explains them in depth.
I must say, this lifespan thing is really something that bugged me a lot on ttrpgs. There were even some "starting age" for your characters on some older d&d iterations.
And I must say that the ribbon feature of the timeless body of the druid inspired me to create a character, specifically a druid elf of some thousand years that I used as a npc in one of my campaigns.
In the "5E" campaign I'm setting up, I will have all player races age the same as humans. I am also implementing Aging Rolls, which starts at character creation (this is also how a PC will determine starting ability scores). Plus, all training (level ups, feats, upgrades to Ancestral Weapons, new skills, etc.) require downtime with a specific amount of tendays and gp per tenday. Instead of leveling up normally, you can either spend actual time and gold or spend XP (based on current level for everything except level up, which will be based on next level to attain) to reduce the time it takes for Training downtime activity.
It would be interesting if Elves aged in the same way Saiyans do in Dragon Ball. The die around the same time as humans, but they are in their prime for far longer than other species. That means that once they DO start aging, they age far faster than others. So an 80 year old Human and an 80 year old Saiyan appear to have aged the same amount, but that process only started kicking in for the saiyan a few years ago. I think that makes a lot of sense to use for other fictional ancestries.
I'm a 100% hard disagree on this, and it's one of my favorite things about elves. I think it should have a massive impact on culture. That said, i like your rules so I can use those while ignoring your lore.